Clutch
Poems
- Complete Poetry Publication List
- The oldest lobster fisher in the world says she might as well keep doing it
- A Reckoning With Johnny Appleseed
- The sparrows (Once again, I was wrong)
- For the grandmother teaching the children how to plant seeds in the community garden
- Substitutions for Buttermilk
- Make Believe
- For the students
- An Answer
- The scientist and the poet
- A 10-year old boy finds a stick on a field trip to the beach
- Clutch
- Erosion
- Piano lessons
- On the Impermanence of Tools
- The Photographer
- A Deeper Pretending
- After days of deep grief
- The News
- How I Wanted to be Beautiful
- Gathering stones
- Writing on Mother’s Day
- Learning to Fish
- Every day something new
- Insights from Arthropods
- Defensible Space
- Turtles at the Convention Center
- Spring Hatch
- On the evolution of shadows
Clutch
Where soil is swept away
or a tree tips over,
notice how the roots
still clutch rocks.
Touch the tangled arms
wrapped around boulders.
Feel how Matter
shapes itself to stone.
Consider how we pick up
and mold ourselves to what is unyielding.
Notice what you were given to grow against,
the hard things you still grasp,
what you might hope to set down.
—
Originally published in What We Were Born For.
©2024 EMILIE LYGREN
