Live Encounters Poetry & Writing February 2025
The Order of All Things, poem by Claudine Nash.
The Order of All Things
I stand in a dusting of snow
by the embankment,
the night’s whole moon
hangs above the
bare locust branches
to my left,
the sun offers
the day’s first band
of light
to the herd of deer
in the field
on my right
all and everything
infinitely greater
than the cluttered
knots of worry
I have been dragging
through the rooms
of my house
these nights
at last,
such pleasure
to place them
in their proper space
in order
of all things
of importance
© Claudine Nash
Claudine Nash is a psychologist and award-winning poet whose poetry collection Beginner’s Guide to Loss in the Multiverse (Blue Light Press, 2020) was chosen as winner of the 2020 Blue Light Book Award. Her other books include The Wild Essential (Kelsay Books, 2017) and Parts per Trillion (Kelsay Books, 2016) as well as the chapbooks Things for Which You Thirst (Weasel Press, 2020) and The Problem with Loving Ghosts (Finishing Line Press, 2014). Widely published, her work has been nominated for the Pushcart, Best of Net, and Pulitzer prizes and has appeared in numerous publications including Asimov’s Science Fiction, BlazeVOX, and Cloudbank among others.