here unmasked outdoors
where two trees grown close
bridge the gap between them.
We’d been isolated over two years
before gathering in this open space
between the house standing here since
1840 and the new barn built forty years
later, solid fieldstone foundation, trust-
worthy weathervane rooster on roof.
I look beyond myself
to the stretch of restored prairie,
to the woods, fill a notebook with lines
of words that skitter toward meaning, fill
a sketchbook with timid drawings that
warm me to art, to art-making, a way
to bring home woods, prairie, double
and singular trees. Here where
the ephemeral pond is now dry
but the creek though low still
flows cold and clean
I am.
Margaret Rozga
Margaret Rozga served as the 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate and the 2021 inaugural artist/scholar in residence at the UW-Milwaukee at Waukesha Field Station where she offered workshops and write-ins. She continues to offer summer Field Station poetry events. Her fifth book is Holding My Selves Together: New and Selected Poems (Cornerstone Press 2021).
Portage Magazine 