Audobon (from New Goose) -- Lorine Niedecker

Tried selling my pictures.  In jail
twice for debt.  My companion
a sharp, frosty gale.


            In England, unpacked
them with fear:
must I migrate back
to the woods unknown, strange
to all but the birds
I paint?


Dear Lucy, the servants here
move quiet
as kildeer.

Plover

I was the solitary plover

a pencil

        for a wing-bone

From the secret notes

I must tilt

upon the pressure

execute and adjust

      In us sea-air rhythm

"We live by the urgent wave

of the verse"

Lorine Niedecker, From Paean to Place (!968), included in Collected Works (ed. Jenny Penberthy), Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002