Split This Rock Poem-of-the-Week: Bruce Weigl

OH NATURE


.....Today some things worked as they were meant to.
A big spring wind came up and blew down
.....from the verdant neighborhood trees,
millions of those little spinning things,
.....with seeds inside, and my heart woke up alive again too,
as if the brain could be erased of its angry hurt;
.....fat chance of that, yet
things sometimes work as they were meant,
.....like the torturer who finally can’t sleep,
or the god damn moon
.....who sees everything we do
and who still comes up behind clouds
.....spread out like hands to keep the light away.


-Bruce Weigl



From Declension in the Village of Chung Luong (Ausable Press, 2006), used by permission.

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Bruce Weigl is the author of thirteen collections of poetry, several translations, and a best-selling memoir The Circle of Hanh. He is Distinguished Professor of Arts and Humanities at Lorain County Community College.

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Weigl will be featured at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, March 10-13, 2010, in Washington, DC. The festival will present readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, film, activism – four days of creative transformation as we imagine a way forward, hone our community and activist skills, and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for social change. For more information: info@splitthisrock.org. Split This Rock is co-sponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies, the country’s oldest multi-issue progressive think tank.

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