And Four More New Poems.By Jane Satterfield.

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Between the Dog & the Wolf

is the hinge between the mythic & the mundane,
the scrim of light where the shepherd’s
alert to the shifting shape at the edge of the flock—

Between the dog & the wolf, the vanishing
distinctions of fur, legends
of packs & their looping runs—the flash

of fear & fable of hunger, its coarse undercoat.
Between friend & foe
is the memory of the forest, the screech owl sounding

over tracks leading back to the realm where plague
will not lift or lighten its grip.
Between the tame & the feral we’re getting closer

to home where a stray makes his rounds & the sky
sifts through lilac & lavender,
fuschia & flamingo. Between the dog & the wolf

is the hinge between the mythic & the mundane,
a stream marking one field
& the next. Watch for the shadow that slips

through a hidden door in the hedge.

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Fable with Ritual Burn

In the height of summer, gather at dusk in a field filled
with fireflies, the cool notes of the barred owl’s call. A tale
requires a teller, a seeker, so it makes sense to follow
the path past abandoned oil tankers to reach
the rise where someone produces a kindling tool to burn
the beautiful thing that was broken. A tale begins

with a greeting, an interrogation, misfortune or lack
made known, though this is no consolation
for the damage done to a sculpture hut meant to hold one man’s
dream of undying devotion. Watch the flame catch,
stagger, then blossom. Watch for sudden wind. The timbers
will blaze. Take in the stars overhead, their shiny

excess. Know that the seeker is sometimes aided by grateful
animals, though none tonight will arrive. They read the sky,
its signature of sparks and smoke. Take turns tossing
into the blaze whatever feels toxic, villainies past
or present, public or private—old planks too worn to be used
send up a gyre of ash. Let water erase the field of flame,

the assembled depart in single file toward some transformation.
Freedom for the teller may be absolute—a crane
may give a steed as a gift, a chisel may spy—but what of firewhirls
in old growth forests that flicker across our screens?
A tale branches through spheres of action, time shifts, a collection
of uncanny surface details. Today, the air’s a fume-infused

orange cocktail to sip, warmed with a smoggy glow. We trek
through grass dry as tinder. Kudzu leaps and climbs.
The parched trees send out their injunction, the bluebirds with their
open beaks. Where is the raven with deadly or life-giving
water? What spool of thread shows the hero his way? Watch the horizon—
a blue scrim of mountain now smudged with smoke.

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A Pair of Wishes

Owl

After Evening Star, Kiki Smith, 2023, print (aqueous archival inkjet, acrylic archival inkjet, white gold leaf on Hahnemühle rag paper)

Feather-shined, you wing over
a whorl of phosphorescent pools
to fly silently through winter skies
in a freefall of crystal constellations.
I wonder if you can hear my call
from the jagged coastline beneath
the path of your quiet glide—come closer,
hunter, share the compass of your sight,
that gaze of focused clarity.

•

Selkie

After Dark Water, Kiki Smith, 2023, bronze

Shape-shifter, I’ve watched you ride
cold currents, rise through tidal music,
shedding fur pelt and fin to walk
the wrack line’s scrim of shells
and shipwreck clutter. Sometimes
I dream of distant islands: do we
share common kin?
Speak
of how you learned to live on land,
on steaming bowls of seaweed soup,
half at home, eyes turned toward the sea.

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Song for Brood X

Great Eastern Brood, 2021

What to make of this season’s bombardment?
Lockdown neighbors give into enchantment—
hordes of cicadas. A hovering torment,
sonic plague or the canopy’s adornment?
Three species collide in song—an arrangement
of chitter and tymbal, wing-flicks to augment
brief lives fueling the brood’s fulfillment,
their reedy drone an uncanny element
swerving through space, a confused regiment
UFOs humming, some stunned on cement—
night-shelled, ruby-eyed, their wings copper filament—
miracles risen in sudden alignment,
a parliament summoned for one last appointment,
no memory left of their darker confinement.

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Nature Is What We Know

After a series by Victoria Brookland, whose art channels the Gothic imagery of Emily Dickinson and the Brontë sisters

Crows fly across the muslin, wings in flight,
avoiding teacups they might topple.

Who is the dressmaker whose vision
weaves fabric and magic?

Glasses brim with luminous elixirs.
What cordial should I serve you, crow?

You gather keys for which are there are no rooms.
Feathers fall, though the book advises work herbs into powder.

I’d wear the woodland if I could, feathers
and twig, hedge and fern, a mossy hem.

Does the lantern obscure your path of flight?

A sudden flood washes away a doll house,
another’s seized by a stand of trees.

Ladder, hem, and button hole—
the minutes flash their primary wings.

Will I count those feathers? Will I find
yours among them?

Keep the hour glass in mind, the needle
hear at hand.

To seal the charm, sing in the mouth of a man.

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NOTES

“Between the Dog & the Wolf”: “Between the dog and the wolf” is an expression for the hour of twilight (in French, l’heure entre chien et loup).

“Fable with Ritual Burn”: Italicized lines are from Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Fairytale. Corona V, Craig Pleasants’ fifth iteration of an installation with reclaimed wood, was damaged by a field mower and burned in a bonfire to celebrate the post-lockdown re-opening of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in July 2021. Photos of the ritual burn can be seen here. See also Pleasants’ website here.

♦

Jane Satterfield has published five poetry books, including The Badass Brontës, a winner of the Diode Editions Poetry Prize, Apocalypse Mix (Autumn House Poetry Prize), Her Familiars, and Assignation at Vanishing Point (Elixir Press Poetry Award). She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowship, the 49th Parallel Award for Poetry from Bellingham Review, the Ledbury Poetry Festival Prize, and more. She has been a Walter E. Dakin Fellow at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and received residency fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Recent poetry and essays appear in The Common, DIAGRAM, Ecotone, Interim, Literary Matters, The Missouri Review, Orion, Shenandoah, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. Satterfield has served on the faculty of the Frost Farm and West Chester Poetry Conferences. She is married to poet Ned Balbo and lives in Baltimore, where she is a professor of writing at Loyola University Maryland.