was when I slept in the woodsbareheaded beneath jaggedstars and the membranousnear-misses of bats, whenI tasted watercress,wild carrot, and sorrel,when I was knownby the lilac I hid beside,and when that lilac, burdenedby my expectations of lilacs,began a journeywithout me, as whenthe dirt road sang, O,rugosa rose, farewell,and ran behind the clippedwhite pine hedge intothe immeasurableheartbreaks of the field.
Feature Date
- May 8, 2023
Series
- What Sparks Poetry
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Copyright © 2018 by Cecily Parks.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Cecily Parks is the author of two books of poetry and editor of The Echoing Green: Poems of Fields, Meadows, and Grasses. Her newer work appears in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The New Republic, Best American Poetry 2022, and elsewhere. The poetry editor for ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, she teaches in the MFA Program at Texas State.
April 30, 2018
New York, New York
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The New Yorker is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues covering two-week spans. Although its reviews and events listings often focus on the cultural life of New York City, The New Yorker has a wide audience outside New York and is read internationally.
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