Lephincorrach (#2)
I startle the owl which slopes away through the garnished air.
The vacant places, not armored against us, not
armored at all. At the limit of shadow’s unquenchable dialectic
the decision to continue, versus the decision that is prayer.
Peace be to the startled owl, to the unseen cuckoo,
to the lone orchid on the bank leeching tannins, post-industrial.
I place a little birth into the mouth of something that hasn’t
happened yet, some purpose. Let it propose its wedding vow.
The Fuchsia Hedge
It is awake. Its glass eyes are open. It sees with the night’s
rain, which it has caught in its wands. It wants
to thank you, or somebody. It thinks green is not the only color.
It breaks the wire fence into two parts, the porous
& the charmed. Sheep are disinterested in it. Stray maples
pierce it from beneath, they have heard these stories.
It wants to read a book about prisons, our prisons. It guesses
this will be a mystery play. Sunday
is just another day to it. It has no rituals other than growth.
G.C. Waldrep’s most recent books are feast gently (Tupelo Press, 2018), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America; The Earliest Witnesses (Tupelo Press/Carcanet, 2021); and The Opening Ritual (Tupelo Press, 2024), one of The New York Times’s best poetry collections of 2024. Waldrep lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he teaches at Bucknell University.
