P0ET

PoetryMagazine.com BACK
Since 1996 Volume XXI

Annie Finch

Annie Finch’s most recent books are Spells: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press) and A Poet’s Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry (University of Michigan Press). Her work appears in Paris Review, Poetry, and The Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century American Poetry. She teaches at poetcraftcircles.com.

YOUR FOREST

Your forest grows as green as love.

Your ferns ride, simple near ground.

Fern-shadowed moss still curls above

stones that your glacier dappled down.

Your night’s sadness is well-contained

within the sap pushing the stem

of plants that grow along the dark

to root at morning. Joy finds them,

and oceans, lost because they are vast

(like ruined roads left on the land)

take your kind waters home each time

that they, pushing up the sand,

make tides with your evaporate rain.

The ocean is at peace again.

Far algae grows; the blue stays smooth;

and in dim light, the beach is soothed.

Your forest grows as green as love,

your night’s sadness is well-contained,

and oceans, lost because they are vast, ,

make tides with your evaporate rain.