Each time a new season rolls around, KNAU listener Rob Bettaso writes a fresh poem for our Poetry Friday series. This week, Rob celebrates all things summer, including hiking, hummingbirds and some of his favorite poets who also love the language of the sunshine season. Here is Rob Bettaso with an original poem, Her Blood Flows Green.
RB: There were 3 inspirations to this poem, which is basically a Mother Nature-type poem, written as we transitioned from Spring to Summer. The first inspiration was a walk along Walnut Creek in the White Mountains and literally describing of what I was mostly seeing, not so much what I was hearing or smelling or whatever, but just mostly what I was seeing.
The second inspiration was a story a friend had told me – a friend from back East – about a hummingbird getting trapped in his garage, and how the hummingbird in its attempt to escape, didn’t fly out the garage door. It just tried to bolt through a window. The window was open, but there was a screen there. And so it jammed its little bill – which is like the size of a toothpick – right into the screen. So, it was kind of difficult for him to get it out of there and release it outside, but he did.
And the third inspiration was as I was writing it, like I always do I guess, I was just reflecting over other poets who appreciate nature; people like Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman and in this case, a poem of D.H. Lawrence came to mind, a poem he wrote called The Hummingbird, which provide kind of an oblique reference to this poem, kind of comical, humorous take on hummingbirds could be perceived if they were actually dangerous to you.
The title of this poem is Her Blood Flows Green
Walking through a watery world,
The air liquid; the color of chlorophyll.
Gentle rains, rare here in Spring,
Coaxed the oaks to unfurl
Golden leaves, early gone to green,
Deep, saturated now,
On a threshold,
Of bold Solstice.
Eternities’
Longest days.
Along a faint foot path,
Creek-side, sunshot,
Tumbling down its course,
Of mossy cobbles,
Neon like a tetra,
From the Amazon.
A fore-noon walk,
Canopied from a Sun
Pulsing, beating, pumping
Like an engine,
Fueling a golden world
Gone shimmering green.
A thick curtain,
Rippling in an aquatic breeze.
Barreling through air,
A lime-backed hummer,
Grazes my ear.
Had he struck,
An emerald iris,
Would he have stuck,
Like a dart,
In the Bull’s Eye?
Poetry Friday is produced by KNAU's Gillian Ferris. If you have an idea for a segment, drop her an email at Gillian.Ferris@nau.edu.
