Excerpts from Into Quiet

Into Quiet is a reflection on the natural world around poet Katie Batten MacDowell's coastal home on the back bay of the Atlantic Coast in New Jersey. In this text, she explores just a small portion of her ecosystem to which she belongs through the refined Japanese poetic styles of Haiku and Tanka.

Seagull

i.

hoarfrost glistening
gliding in midsummer sky
embodied freedom


ii.

alien stealth cuts
through invisible whirling
space between wind gods
hovering on spumescent
Aphrodite’s turgid flows

Jellyfish

i.

ink-dark still water
moonlike orbs pull tides below
synchronized transit


ii.

pulsating rhythm
silent under mud water
cuts through oil-slicks
to sting a silver ghost shrimp
then begins the dance to sea

Black Ants

i.

Amazonians
sisterhood of warriors
what I waste you take


ii.

hours I watch you
moving back and forth in lines
a traffic pattern
stopping at times to touch-talk
risking perils of our feet

Inchworm

i.

fern-colored you move
with faith of a leaf nearby
but it is my hand


ii.

barely visible
you silently chew through leaves
holes larger than you
you slip under silver sides
to begin chewing once more

Dwarf Cinquefoil

i.

you are strong for size
pushing up through graveled road
making lemonade


ii.

what are weedy things
unwanted flashes of color
rejected wild
you do not seem so threatening
to the way of life of grass

Excerpts

Click to read:

• Witness
• Vestiges & Bones
• Turning the Silver Wheel
• Into Quiet
• Love Amongst the Fishes