This Rain
brings with it the scent of rain-soaked lilac, lemon lily. Bruised
skirts of thunderclouds drop their wet hems over this prairie. It rains
and the ditches brim, rains
and the water rises like ire amongst the willows.
What we say and do not say. The heart
incandescent, riverine with distance.
***
lilt like this: sound
of droplets from leaves
gift gift gift
(Shortlisted for the International Salt Prize for Best Individual Poem, 2012
Published in The Salt Book of New Writing 2013, UK.)
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Jenna Butler is the author of three books of poetry, Seldom Seen Road (NeWest Press, 2013), Wells (University of Alberta Press, 2012), and Aphelion (NeWest Press, 2010), in addition to a book of ecocritical essays, A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge of the Grizzly Trail. When she is not in the classroom as a professor of ecocriticism and creative writing at Red Deer College, she works as a beekeeper on her off-grid organic farm in northern Canada. Her new book of essays on women and beekeeping, Revery: A Year of Bees, is forthcoming.
