Live Encounters Poetry & Writing January 2026.
Meditation, poems by Daniel Lusk.
Meditation
This is a holy place.
Mud people
keep the wind in pots.
It is the porcupine
in his quill robe,
the moose in his crown,
who made it holy.
See the star tracks
where the grouse walked,
unhurried, in the snow.
See the moss on the path
we swept free of leaves
and branches,
the moss covered stone.
Rain falls,
the pail and bowl
are filled with water.
We might have used it
to water the seedlings,
or for bathing ourselves.
The Long Mind
I have seen at nightfall
blinking across the way
and thought I saw
a ship of burning lamps.
Opening the woods
I spared young oaks
for in these saplings
is the long future and knowing.
I believe there may be children
here among these roots
who pass for the children of gods.
Once in the dark age
was a naked race.
I wonder, do they live on
in these streams?
These intricate, improbable
nests of the orioles,
those skeletons we find in rocks
of lost, improbable animals
may be evidence
of something unresolved
some once upon the world
when we were holy.
Twelfth Night
Epiphany: a crystal hammer.
We dismantle our tree,
admire each treasured ornament,
wrap and pack them all away.
Forest choir at dawn,
the haunting F-sharp
of the wind-blown trees
along the gambrel of the bluff.
Prayer-flag leaves
of young beeches by the gray,
snow-hatted birdbath
their low, muttered eccles.
A single cardinal on the snow;
his medieval red relieves
the January monochrome.
Snowplow man inside
the cowl of his black truck
comes and goes in corridors of white
his yellow blade a cup, an ordinary mystery.
Boat, Pond, Girl
This boat beside the pond is not seaworthy.
This pond is not a worthy sea
for going off in boats or deep imagining.
It keeps the little fish, green frogs,
and yellow-spotted salamanders
in mud tunnels underneath the boat.
The carnivorous, two-oared bug
without a name who eats the pollywogs.
Rain runs in.
A blue Buddha watches over.
Here is a moss bank with a copse of trees,
and a moss covered path
leading away through woods
toward habitations of grouse and hare.
If this is the “world navel,”
how shall we think of this old satellite dish
aimed at the ridge of mountains to the west
and no longer connected to anything.
I will think of it as the chakra of this place
and one day glimpse eternity.
Imagine the goldfish, debonair,
rising with their gold-headed canes
and strolling out among the trees,
singing a tune you can almost
remember hearing before.
I have a stick with a knob on the end.
Naked, I have stones in my pocket.
If I tap my stick on the ground,
is there a bush god who will answer
or a green girl to wave from the boat?
A Room in the Woods
To sit on a stone
with my back to a tree.
I have a chair and a wall.
To look away to a hillside,
rising from a stream below.
A floor of wild oats
and false hellebore.
This is my room—the door
and windows wherever they need to be.
The odor of solitude
like peppermint, sprung
from a cribbage of holes
a woodpecker tapped in a birch.
My young friend H recalled
waking in a thatched hut
to see a man of the village
standing over her, watching her sleep.
J said on Reunion Island
the homes also have no doors,
and people meander like cousins
in and out of each others’ houses.
Deep claw marks of a grizzly bear
etched the door of DB’s cabin in Arlee.
“Intimacy,” “privacy”—these
are meaningless without the word “door.”
I draw pouch and pipe
from my pockets, a match
to spend a solemn hour.
I always imagined living alone
in the maid’s room
of a brownstone on 63rd Street.
Now the cat is dead
and one less heart beating in the house.
I read somewhere
that rue was called “meadow rue”
to ease the regret.
© Daniel Lusk
These are poems culled from KIN (Wind Ridge Books, 2013) by Daniel Lusk.
Daniel Lusk is author of eight poetry collections and other books, most recently Every Slow Thing, poetry (Kelsay Books 2022) and Farthings, eBook (Yavanika Press 2022). Well-known for his teaching and widely published in literary journals, his genre-bending essay, “Bomb” (New Letters) was awarded a Pushcart Prize. Native of the prairie Midwest and a former commentator on books for NPR, Daniel is married to Irish poet Angela Patten; they live in Vermont.
Thank you to my wonderfully talented brother-in-law!