• “February, Rain”

    A Poem by Tess Taylor

    1

    Dawn, after the hoped-for downpour.

    Droplets beaded in the sage.

    2

    On hills, ruts revert to streambed:

    Thistle-blue, the sky in rivulets.

    3

    On damp

    fallen leaves, bright fungal blooms—

    4

    Live oak cradles winter sun: Satsuma.

    Winter clouds—swift coho salmon—

    5

    Along freeways, pans & garbage.

    Fragile line between expensive & discarded.

    A screen, rotating advertisement.

    A camp: three tents, two bicycles.

    6

    On this road, backlit coyote:

    Quick illuminated trickster god—

    7

    At home: Absentminded,

    under storm. Symphonic

    crash, then silence.

    Everything is gleaming, gleaming.

    We prime ourselves to forest atmospherics.

    8

    On the mountain now mossy live oaks

    twist, softening our hills.

    Druid, draoidh—some greenish

    Welsh or Celtic god

    lodged in a latter Spanish colony.

    After rain: white steeple, green behind it.

    9

    The light might be the Philippines or Goa.

    Little mission church on a green hillock.

    10

    O white sanctuary gleaming:

    You trail all your bloody histories—

    __________________________________

    “February, Rain” is excerpted from Rift Zone, a poetry collection by Tess Taylor. Copyright © 2020 by Tess Taylor. Reprinted with permission of Red Hen Press. 


    Tess Taylor
    Tess Taylor
    Tess Taylor, an avid gardener, is the author of five acclaimed collections of poetry including Work & Days, which was named one of the ten best books of poetry of 2016 by the New York Times. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, Tin House, The Times Literary Supplement, CNN, and the New York Times. Taylor has been Distinguished Fulbright US Scholar at the Seamus Heaney Centre in Queen’s University in Northern Ireland, and the Anne Spencer Poet-in-Residence at Randolph College. She has also served as on-air poetry reviewer for NPR’s All Things Considered for over a decade. Taylor lives in El Cerrito, California, where she tends to fruit trees and backyard chickens.





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