qarrtsiluni

from Dream Cabinet by Ann Fisher-Wirth

—Sleep, says the sea, sleep, says the sea, the birds
thicken in the trees as light glints across the water.

A breeze. Late afternoon, the light growing pewter,
soft Falun red of the ramshackle summer house

soaking up shadows. Out on the water, a motorboat.
I would like to spend the curve of a year

from bird cherries to mushrooms, svamp, in Sweden.
Trace the circle round through lilacs, king’s-blood-lilies,

lilies of the valley, then blueberries, strawberries,
raspberries, then lingonberries, apples.

To gather them as they ripen, wander along
with that rapt purposeful emptiness, every sense alert

for a glimpse of red or blue, the scrotal sponginess
of puffballs, luminescence of chanterelles.

To know this place in the fullness of its seasons.
And watch the light on water, day after day,

empty out of my everlasting self-regard.
Let the sunlight, fog, or rain have its will with me.

“Dream Cabinet” was published online in its entirety in the special Ecopoetry issue of How2, 2008, and in Rampike: Ecopoetics Issue, Spring 2009.

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Ann Fisher-Wirth’s third book of poems, Carta Marina, was published by Wings Press in 2009. Her third chapbook, Slide Shows, placed second in the Finishing Line Chapbook Competition and came out in 2009. With Laura-Gray Street she is coeditor of Ecopoetry: A Contemporary American Anthology, which Trinity University Press will release in 2012. Ann teaches at the University of Mississippi and in the low residency MFA program at Chatham University; also she teaches yoga at Southern Star in Oxford, Mississippi.