A lovely poem about memory and the passage of time by Wyatt Townley, who is a 4th generation Kansan. I did not know of her work until today. The poem is from her most recent book of poems, The Afterlives of Trees, Woodley Press, 2011. Trees, she says, "are quiet teachers. Their height relies on their depth. They show us how to hold on, and how to let go—and how to begin again, season after season, year after year."
"Her new collection of poems uses trees as a motif to explore the theme of transformation and features stunning black-and-white images by Michael Johnson, a master photographer likened by critics to Ansel Adams."
I am particularly grateful for her use of the word shushes,gracefully conveying the memory of silence and movement. Perhaps it is memory itself that shushes, as well as the chill of "late November light." Perhaps like the remembered light, all memory slants. "The spreading twilight" is among the most treasured times, along with the more elusive dawn, the slow coming and closing of day.
Finding
the Scarf
The woods are the book
we read over and over as children.
Now trees lie at angles, felled
by lightning, torn by tornados,
silvered trunks turning back
to earth. Late November light
slants through the oaks
as our small parade, father, mother, child,
shushes along, the wind searching treetops
for the last leaf. Childhood lies
on the forest floor, not evergreen
but oaken, its branches latched
to a graying sky. Here is the scarf
we left years ago like a bookmark,
meaning to return the next day,
having just turned our heads
toward a noise in the bushes,
toward the dinnerbell in the distance,
toward what we knew and did not know
we knew, in the spreading twilight
that returns changed to a changed place.
— Wyatt Townley
More from Wyatt Townley's website:
Wyatt Townley writes books, teaches yoga, and is tall for her age. Her work has been read by Garrison Keillor on NPR, featured by Ted Kooser in hisAmerican Life in Poetry column, and published in journals ranging from The Paris Review to Newsweek. Among her books of poems: The Breathing Field (Little, Brown), Perfectly Normal (The Smith), and her new collection, The Afterlives of Trees (Woodley Press). She won a Master Artist Fellowship in Poetry from the Kansas Arts Commission to complete it.
She has also written nonfiction. HarperCollins published Wyatt's yoga book,Yoganetics: Be Fit, Healthy, and Relaxed One Breath at a Time, deemed an "Editor's Choice" by Yoga Journal. Using her background as both dancer and journalist, she wrote the commemorative 50th anniversary history of Kansas City Ballet (The Kansas City Star).
Her work has been featured widely in journals including North American Review, Dance Magazine, Newsweek, The Paris Review, New Letters, Piano & Keyboard, Margie, Parents, Southern Poetry Review, Yoga Journal, Heliotrope, Western Humanities Review, Kansas City Magazine, Orion, Connecticut River Review, Self, Small Press, TV Guide, The New York Times, among others.
Professionally, Wyatt has always lived something of a double life, straddling the worlds of motion (dance/yoga) and stasis (writing: as in Hemingway's "apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair"). She continues along both paths and delights as they entwine.
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Wyatt Townley also teaches and offers readings of her work. Here is a review:
"It was absolutely wonderful to have a poet of her caliber....Letters from Home: Writing from the Body was an extraordinary journey into the landscape of the senses. The combination of guided imagery and experiential prompts produced a deep and at times startling awareness of the synergistic relationship between mind, body, and the mystery sometimes referred to as soul."—Maril Crabtree, director of education, The Writers Place
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And here, some response to The Afterlives of Trees:
The Afterlives of Trees was introduced on NPR by Garrison Keillor, featured by US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser in his American Life in Poetry column, and completed with a Master Artist Fellowship in Poetry from the Kansas Arts Commission.
"The Afterlives of Trees brings together exquisite poetry of great tenderness, strength, and beauty, but it is also a book of revelation....a love song to the life force."—Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, poet laureate of Kansas
"Go into the woods, which are these pages. These accomplished poems open a clearing through which to see the world afresh. Lucid, imaginative, present, they focus on small details and expand to encompass the universe...I wish I could have written these poems, perhaps especially the love poems—but then, they are all love poems."
—Laurel Blossom
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Wyatt Townley's husband, Roderick Townley, is an author of absorbing children's fiction, including most recently The Door in the Forest.