Loblolly Marsh Collaborative Poems

Collaborative Poems by Indiana Poet Laureate Shari Wagner’s August 26, 2017 Arts in the Parks and Historic Sites poetry workshop at Loblolly Marsh Nature Preserve, Limberlost State Historic Site

Contributors: Kristine Anderson, Cassie Caylor, Tanya Caylor, Rosemary Freedman, Linda Reising, Christina Simmons, Katie Simmons, Jessica Thompson Kathleen Yeadon (Rosemary and Kathleen were part of the July 22 workshop also)

The Prairie Dock

after Mary Oliver

Come with me
through a yellow canyon

of prairie dock, their faces
bee magnets

or vagabond stars
urging us on

to hide and seek
in an ocean of yellow.

They show us courtesy,
blooming in late August

announcing, or rather
chiming, the fall. They

whisper in passing
how small we are. They are

The celebrities of the prairie,
waving like sails catching

the wind. But wait–
their leaves cling like ballast

close to the ground. Come,
grasp those leaves, rough

like the hands of farmwives.

August Gold

“What a quantity of gold
there is in a marsh……..”
-Gene Stratton-Porter

There’s gold
in the petite bells
of partridge peas,

in how they line-up
along the stem, good
soldiers at attention

There’s gold
in evening primrose,
gold as in slow churned butter
and pressing your lips
to the first peach
of the season

There’s gold in tickseed
ready for the pounce

and in rudbeckia’s
black and yellow-winged
butterflies

There’s gold
in cottonwood leaves,
yellow hearts
pasted over green

Gold in prairie dock,
a thousand stars
anchored to the earth,
reaching for the blue

There’s gold
in the goldenrod, or so
Thomas Edison believed,
making rubber tires
for Henry Ford’s car

The pictures were taken by Shari Wagner.