“Pawtuckaway” for Southeast Land Trust
by Megan Buchanan
Jan, 2021
Pawtuckaway
It’s Sunday and all the hawks are out.
White pines offer cone clusters skyward.
Here you’ll find one hundred blues and greens
with surround-sound chickadees.
Mica splashes mix with ice: a brightness.
Fish hooks flash in golden grasses, clear filaments
caught in winter stalks.
The stream bubbles as it turns left, submerged
branches bob up and down in currents.
Leathery-orange oak leaves glow
under ice at the edge, white waxing moon slice
above us. A lone leaf releases, takes its time
flips and floats
zigzags in the wind
pale copper lanceolate against crisp January blue—
takes a long time
to land on the water
where blueblack ripples undulate.
Pines embrace in the brisk wind, singing.
O choir of trees, wind, clouds—
layers of matter, solid and dissolving.
Each cone a velvety Valentine of hope, an aria
of I love you in tree language,
dark knots of potential energy way up high
in the breeze. And these needles!
soft, shimmering, pliant,
sheltering me (thank you).
We humans make none of this magnificence!
We can only encircle, tend and care.
As the sun drops pale gold
behind birch, twin crows call across
snow’s low-key sparkle in the shade.
Watercolor and pencil by Nathan Shepard (Jan 17, 2021)
Megan Buchanan is a poet, performer, collaborative dancemaker, high school teacher and activist. Her full-length poetry collection Clothesline Religion was published by Green Writers Press in 2017. Her work has been published in The Sun magazine, A Woman's Thing, make/shift and numerous publications, as well as recent anthologies including Roads Taken: Contemporary Vermont Poetry and Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection. Her writing has been supported by awards from the Vermont Arts Council, Vermont Performance Lab, the Vermont Studio Center, and other organizations. She is currently immersed in an Artist Residency in Motherhood (ARiM), in which this collaboration will be a part. For more details, visit meganbuchanan.net
The Southeast Land Trust (seltnh.org) conserves and stewards land for the benefit of people and nature in New Hampshire. SELT serves 52 towns and cities of Rockingham and Strafford counties and has conserved tens of thousands of acres since 1980, including nature preserves, hiking trails, farmland, and scenic vistas. SELT relies on its annual contributing members, committed Board of Directors, and talented staff and volunteers to keep advancing critical conservation initiatives in our region.