Nature Poetry

Sharon F. McDermott is a poet and an administrator at the Center for Environmental Oncology of UPCI. In 2005, her chapbook, Alley Scatting, inspired by the alleyways of Pittsburgh, was published by Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin, http://parallelpress.library.wisc.edu/about.shtml

Lunar Eclipse, 2005 (February 14, 2007)

"Poetry is tribal not material"
C.D. Wright, from Cooling Time: An American Vigil

and there we were laughing in the cab
of your truck, watching the luminous scoop
of moon melt down the long black throat

of the sky. We had learned by now not to force
our moments, not to chase meteor showers out of the city
only to wind up lost, a little creeped-out on a country road,

crawling with shadows and the scissoring of locusts. Here, on city
streets, we’d taught each other to look up, to leave the over lit
coffeeshop to its mugs and crushed beans and stand quietly

on Walnut Street, two stones in a moving stream
of window shoppers and dinner dates. I knew you were the one
friend who’d greet the sky’s latest show with awe

and a few silly jokes, the friend who wouldn’t scoff
at spending a hot Pittsburgh night craning our necks
to view la luna slowly whittling

down to a lit grin. We drove onto Howe, beneath the burnt out
lamp of streetlight. And as the earth tilted beneath us,
blotting out its lonely moon, silver

by sliver, I felt a shiver, the merest whisker of the fear
our ancestors must have felt when their numinous path-
maker erased itself and abandoned them in the wilderness

without any guides. But you were here with me, your glasses
tipped in light. And we’d learned enough in this city full of polite strangers, that one good friend meant the difference

between a life as small as a doused beam
and a life of blue fire.
~for Jeff


New Snow, Crabapples (January 31)

Cold walk with Rosie on tangerine trails,
snow in the shadow of tangling.

I watch sunrays ring old summer fruit
like bells. Though ice capped, still red.

Hikers pass quickly, hunched in their coats.
Bitter breeze. Nowhere to go but around

these familiar bends made magic
with shimmer and peaks. And what have I learned

up till now? Still circling, still hoping
to leave my mark. These winter walks,

I try to remember to lean into sparks
of ice on a branch or a crow’s

raucous swoop. Oh woods full of bootcrunch
and breath! Oh heart with its own wild fruit:

Beyond sidewalk grit. Chimney smoke.
Snow in its silverfall blues.

Crows: The Yard (January 17)

Here’s the digestible map: tracks of the great
black birds in the snow. You have fed the crows

of the winter trees shelled nuts, sunflower
seed, suet, and they’ve gone off to pray. The world

blizzards by, whitens like the knuckles of a fearful
hand. You have fed the black-coated warriors

grapes, dried berries, bits of days-old bread, and they
have gone off to battle. February carves itself

ice sculpture. Great clouds of crows eclipse
the falcon’s own lonely hunger which cries out

like a high wind: shree! shree! The map is a trudged
field, the snow fills footsteps behind you. You fed

the thieving humps, cloaked and hunkered down
in oaks and elms. You fed them all, driven simply

by their hunger, and they circled like a great smoke
ring. Here’s the digestible map: the cold world brings

out need, eyes that pierce like stars. You learn to feed
what cannot feed itself, the catcalling monks, the cassocked

friars. Call down the great black fire—trees will feather
into wings and move closer: the answered prayer, nearing.