Epistemology VIII

Despite my field guides, I forget the names
of most trees, the fourteen varieties of fern
that fringe this lake. Even the talk of birds
is over my head, yet I can tell a distant shower
from a thunderhead by the smell, a campfire
from a lightning scorch by its whisper or wail.
If I call the scent of spice bush ground
between my fingers the wrong time
of year it’s still sweeter than magpies,
and the steel string voice a bird makes
from marshland at the meadow’s edge
is not a band I listened to in college,
but strikes a note of longing I understand
better than the shapes stars make
on a clear night in the mountains.
Their anonymous pairing with Greek myths
part of the mystery of what keeps them
in the sky.

*

Epistemology IX

Tonight’s campfire is mostly decorative,
something to conjure ghosts and hold back mosquitoes.
If bats twist overhead, I don’t see them.
If a large shadow comes down the mountain
to drink from the lake, it doesn’t ask permission.
What do I know about why nations crash
into each other with the regularity of rain?
Tonight in the woods I try for a kind of peace
that can watch smoke rise from kindling,
that talks back only to the voices in the heart.

*

Grant Clauser is a Pennsylvanian. His sixth book, Temporary Shelters, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Greensboro Review, Kenyon Review and other journals. He’s an editor for a large media company and teaches poetry at Rosemont College.