“Poems for me are acts of small or large desperation. They grapple with surfaces too steep to walk in any other way, yet which have to be traveled." –Jane Hirshfield

Doris Lynch’s collection Swimming to Alaska was published in November by Bottom Dog Press. The poems describe her Alaskan adventures including a year in an arctic village. Her haibun collection Meteor Hound, published by MediaJazz.com, also came out in 2023. She’s won fellowships from the Alaska Council on the Arts and Indiana Arts Council.

Welcome to the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey. Doris, what poems have you brought for us today?

In the Wee Hours

Between midnight and dawn, my body practices leaving. Using sheets for sails and the bedframe for a prow, my body rehearses its last goodbye. Stars and moon lose their sway, locked doors no longer contain me, and our bedroom windows become as porous as air.

every quarter hour the cuckoo escapes again

-------
Night Swimming

Tonight, I am going to pierce
the Susquehanna with my body
ignoring the setting full moon’s
fractioning of light. Make cuckolds
of the night birds who croon
their loneliness until dawn.
Breaststroke to the stridulations
of male crickets, then shatter
hundreds of wavery stars.

-------
Beneath the Voices of Ravens
Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

We are shadows grasping for shadows of the distant past. Others who walked these paths, sought warmth and camaraderie inside these walls, welcomed newborns, comforted the sick, told stories. The same bright sun warms our backs. We wait as they did for the silence of night, the jeweling of stars, hope for a new dawn.

rising
to the rising sun
Pueblo voices

-------
Night Duties for Trees

To provide a touring bed for moon. Catch miniscule star fragments on needles and leaves. Create a viewing perch for owls and soothe insomniac songbirds to sleep except for the mockingbird. Bless that singer with a protected performance space. For peeper symphonies, provide safe cover for the orchestra pit. Carve out dark hollows where fireflies blink as we sleep on comfortable mattresses and dream of spiraling nebulae.

old moon
midnight crows
share stories

------
Sangre de Cristo Mountains

Here. Now. Not above
but mated to earth
through journeys of clarified
light. The Navajo etched
crosses onto rock walls
in Canyon de Chelly (pronounce Canyon da Shay)
to mark the placement
of stars. Tonight, I watch
one fall. It skips across
Heaven’s meadows, close
enough to grasp with my hand,
close enough so that God’s fiery
hair singes my heart.

------
Night Visitor
Juneau, Alaska

Once in Alaska I slept
in a forest on a mountaintop
on a night with no moon.
During the night, a bear came
down and sniffed at my face.

Part of me thought
this is a nightmare, another
part rejoiced, “Isn’t it grand
to be finally, wholly animal?”
Another part of me withheld my breath
as though my breath were the one
pulse a bear might recognize
in the hemlock forest.

Inside my sleeping bag
I pulled my breasts
toward my spine. My baby
still nursed and I hoped
that the bear would not maul
me for the taste of my milk.

Yet, when that burly
wall of night leaned
over my face, I understood
how the grass feels
when rain starts to fall:
unprotected, vulnerable,
yet eagerly seeking
the wet brush of life.

You've been listening to the poetry of Doris Lynch on the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey.