Grass, like green fire, lifts
her inward heat from the earth,
high enough to scythe.
A nighthawk circles our slope.
He is a wave. I’m planting
Rock-Rose and Fragrant
Plum. My daughters dream of names,
infants sprinkling their
future. Day and season float:
a heart shape, a mock-orange leaf.
Kneedeep, I’m hearing
Kneedeep, the bullfrogs
from winter mud, pulse
upward to couple and dunk,
each throat puffing out
yellow-green as the iris
blossom kneedeep all around
this reflecting pond.
From Candlefish, by Elizabeth Biller Chapman M.A. ’78 (2004, the University of Arkansas Press, $16). Chapman, who spent 17 years as a psychotherapist, wrote her first poem at the age of 43. Her work has been published in many literary journals, and her poem “On the Screened Porch” was included in the Best American Poetry 2002. Creekwalk, her 1995 chapbook, won the (M)other Tongue Press international competition. Poem reprinted with the permission of the University of Arkansas Press.