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The Sugar Creek Sutras

1 Swallows dip and swerve under dark overhangs and water drips from those green walls, slips down the tip of a fern, as over the bronze of a temple bell….

1

Swallows dip and swerve
under dark overhangs

and water drips
from those green walls,

slips down the tip of a fern,
as over the bronze

of a temple bell.

 

2

This stone is an escritoire
not unlike Mother’s
rolltop desk. It conceals
small drawers
for the storage of ideas.
It has a ledge for writing
utensils and a lamp
of great wattage some distance
above.

Often, of a late spring afternoon
someone is writing there
where the creek cools
her bare instep.

 

3

A wren calls
with a voice so like water
water might do well
to learn her song.

Diminuendo
is her domain.

 

4

Translucence—
the condition of first leaf—

light
intersecting  a lattice

that is all
but nothing—

from this, depends
a planet.

 

5

Those dry bronze
leaf covers of the beech tree
sprinkle the forest floor.

And the litter of the tulip
poplar—orange-striped
bits of saffron.

Meanwhile, in the canopy,
a silver maple
completes its mosaic.

 

6

Autumn will flower in its own way—
less and still less,
the concision of what is.

 

—Marc Hudson (Montgomery County)

This poem first appeared in Silk Road Review.

April 24, Marc Hudson, photo

Marc Hudson is a poet and nonfiction writer living in Crawfordsville, Indiana. He taught for many years at Wabash College.  He is a board member of the Friends of Sugar Creek and likes to saunter in the woodlands nearby. He is married to the writer and scholar, Helen Mundy Hudson.  Their daughter, Alix, teaches bilingual special ed. pre-school in Santa Fe. His most recent book of poems is The Disappearing Poet Blues (Bucknell UP).  His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Sewanee Review, Kenyon ReviewPoet LorePrairie Schooner, and other journals.​

Poetry Prompt:  Plein Air Painting
Take paper and pencil or your laptop into a natural setting and write an imagistic poem—or at least its rough draft. Paint pictures with your words and create some imaginative similes and metaphors. Be open to what the elements of nature may be offering to teach you. Perhaps your poem will develop in short sections, like beads on a thread.

Indiana Humanities is celebrating National Poetry Month by sharing a poem and prompt every day in April. Indiana Poet Laureate Shari Wagner selected these poems and wrote the prompts.