• “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 grew up in Berkeley, California, where she led youth garden programming at the Berkeley Youth Alternatives Community Garden and interned in the kitchen at Chez Panisse. In her twenties, she dropped out of Amherst College to become a translator and chef’s assistant at L’Ecole Ritz Escoffier in Paris. An avid gardener and cook, she is also an acclaimed poet. Her chapbook The Misremembered World was selected by Eavan Boland and published by the Poetry Society of America. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Boston Review, Harvard Review, The Times Literary Supplement, and The New Yorker. The San Francisco Chronicle called her first book, THE FORAGE HOUSE, “stunning” and it was a finalist for the Believer Poetry Award. Tess is currently the on air poetry reviewer for NPR’s All Things Considered, and was most recently visiting professor of English and creative writing at Whittier College. Her second book, WORK AND DAYS, was published in 2016. Her third book, RIFT ZONE comes out April 2020.





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