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Elizabeth Raby – United States of America

Poet & Writer

I’m Elizabeth Raby, and my poem is:

At the Wheel of the Year

The leg scratch of crickets sound
from drying sage. Thunder rolls
from white clouds out of the west.
Wind on her summer-burnt arms
is a soft stroking, neither warm nor cool.
This is the time of the singing moon.

One angry skank of a jay.
In uncharacteristic silence,
a chickadee eats seed. Day-lily
leaves yellow, dry seed stalks
rattle, burrs wait for the unwary.

Orange butterflies have curled their tongues
back from rich purple blossoms of buddleia,
sit on pink sandstone, open and close their wings— Satiation? Thanksgiving? Farewell? They rest.
At a signal in butterfly they rise together
into the breeze, beat their way back
to their purple banquet.

All around is abundance, bloom, seed,
sun and breeze, cloud and sky,
mountain and green meadow,
orange zinnia, purple aster, yellow goldenrod.
Larvae wriggle in the watery hollow of a rock.
The world does sing, then holds its breath
in the final moment before the cold comes down.*

* Published in Ink on Snow, Virtual Artists Collective, 2010.

Since I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico in the United States in the year 2000, I have been vastly influenced by the landscape of the surroundings here. I think my poetry has always been about being outdoors, the thrill of being outdoors, and the beauty which Nature provides.

I try not to be just a nature poet, but it creeps into almost every poem that I write. Sometimes, I guess, I have more daring poems than this poem, but I like the beauty that this expresses.