Quotation from the poem “Be in Lust with Life”

“We have been worked by decades
of gain and loss, hard work, meager wages, long hours,
creating to be in lust with life, with existence,
with rain’s kiss and sun’s benediction.”

Gabrielle is a writer, professor, and chef. Her memoir, Hive-Mind, was published in 2015. Her first poetry books Too Many Seeds and Break Self: Feed are available via Finishing Line Press (2024). Her third poetry book, Points in the Network, is forthcoming in 2025. Here is her website: www.gabriellemyers.com

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

Bounty Set to Burst Forth

Tiny toads jump between our fingers as we pull lambs quarters and
thistle from garden beds. In front of us, burned pines, sentinels of our rebirth,
reach their jagged tops towards clear sky. We’ve walked the canyon slope past
hundreds of dead trees, looked up to their charred bodies, dried limbs, hoping
one doesn’t fall on us and knock us out on the fire road. This morning, so
many birds whose names we don’t know sung in unison at the day’s warming.
Our mustard plants which gave us 11 rounds of harvest now go to seed,
green pods fatten in June’s heat; the leaves toughen, ready to be turned to
mulch. What proliferation did we turn from before, ignorant of the potential
surrounding us, not sensing our bounty set to burst forth?

Symbol Shake

Countless tiny petals from thousands
of small flowers undulate in wind.
With a flutter, with a flip,
fragrance fills us with allure.
What will we take home in the cold season,
wisps of a frozen breeze encasing us in hibernation?
Seeds that didn’t blossom last year do this year.
If the city we used to roam in is too far away now
for us to imagine our former walks down sycamore lined streets
—chip bags, crashed bottles, cigarette butts gathering against curbs—
what does that say about our memories,
our holding, our ability to pull
our past close in our minds, to keep it in mind,
covet our former selves as symbols of what might become?

Never Rest in Dormancy Beyond the Proper Time

Let lupine stuff our noses with spring’s
level light. What blocked us, let it spill
out into our pasture thick with vetch.
Proliferation profits from the groundhog’s earth pockets,
tunnels extend long into our garden,
throw digested earth on the gravel road.
A burned pine fell across the upper pasture in last night’s storm.
Another charred oak crashed down three
Manzanita on the fire road. Last night needling hail
hit the fig’s new growth, ricocheted into switchgrass.
Now cypress seedlings reach through freezing air’s
sudden burst which interrupted spring’s
increasing heat and light progression.
The stormy chill set us in stop time between two seasons,
silenced the peeper frog chorus and forest nymphs’
ethereal rise. What inevitable resurgence
of mayfly, star thistle, and blackberry do we count on?
What “never rest in dormancy beyond the proper time”
do we hold in our human bellies,
our internal clocks scratching out chants
to a summer afternoon’s black bird chorus?

The First Fire of Fire Season

Smoke blows in its charge
led by cumulous ignition explosions.
Grasses once swimming in lupine fields
have dried to brittle seed heads
snapping in afternoon’s hot breeze.
Down canyon near the spring,
toads birthed in our garden weeks ago
gather, wet their skins with the high Sierra’s snowmelt
filtered through miles of shale and granite.
What fireworks did we throw into our campfires,
so intent on maintaining tradition despite potential devastation?
What flares will we throw into crowds that contain our children,
the throngs where we used to dance,
the garden plots where we would gather with our grandparents?
Our oak tree’s leaves now coated in ash’s thin layer;
Our strawberry pots litter with burned brush particles.
What water we can harness,
we do. What tanks we should have filled;
what ponds we should have dug;
what swales we should have made around our ranches;
what rivers we should have partially dammed.
Our children will hide on creek banks,
bury themselves in blackberry thickets on spring’s
edges, hold clammy toad skin
to press knowledge into our human veins,
to think our way to a new level of licking,
of absorbing vibrating earth, pulsing spring,
burning trees left like shadows on our hillsides
still growing from their bases out.

You've beem listening to the poems of Gabrielle Myers on the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey.