Four Poems by Yvonne Zipter

 

Lost in Wonder Land

 

I’ve never outgrown that kid thing

of pocketing items that interest me—

 

a desiccated Chinese lantern pod,

a hawk’s feather, the breastbone

 

of a pigeon, a striped rock. Today,

it’s a spiky, green sycamore seed pod,

 

its short porcupine bristles rasping

against my fingers when I grasp it.

 

Nature is trying, with its hollows

and stripes, its elegant arcs and textures,

 

to teach me about beauty. I’m listening

with my eyes, my fingers, my heart.

 

If I were ten yet, I’d store my finds

in a child’s treasure chest—a shoebox

 

stowed beneath the bed. Instead,

I pin them to the back of a carbonized

 

black wooden frame with a hinged

glass door—shadowbox as reliquary,

 

shrine to the natural world. I’m the curator

of my own curiosity, author of my own

 

amazement, and I inhabit wonder

as though it were my birthright.

Bees Knees

 

Three bees are having a field day

with the pitchers of maple syrup

on the patio of the restaurant. Three

bottles of syrup, yet the bees congregate

on a single bottle. One bee, after surveilling

 

the Cholula sauce and ketchup bottles,

returns to scurry with his fellows

around the lid of the syrup pot, dotted

with drips of the golden brown nectar.

I can’t see their knees from where

 

I sit but assume the bees have been

too seduced by syrup to collect pollen.

One bee can’t resist the smooth, glass

Cholula bottles rising up behind the jugs

of syrup like the steepest of mountains.

 

Perhaps its his reflection that draws him,

this apian Narcissus. Another of the three

investigates me then but doesn’t land,

apparently not finding me sweet enough.

They’ve been at it for 45 minutes.

 

They’re busy, the bees, wandering the silvery plateau

of the syrup container, getting high on sugar, jittery

as novice coffee drinkers after venti cold brews.

Addicts! is my first thought. But no, like all of us,

they’re but looking for a bit sweetness in their day.

Fortuitous

 

Somehow,

the soft cup

 

of a tulip

cradling

 

a maple seed

seems a kind

 

of tenderness,

sheltering the seed

 

like a spoon

in a teacup,

 

the subtle pink

striping of each

 

petal harmonizing

with the striations

 

of the seed’s

pale ecru oar,

 

the flower a safe

landing spot for

 

a wayward

winged fruit

 

until its paper

sail lifts into

 

a wind again,

sending it off

 

on a wing

and a prayer.

Waiting to Hibernate

 

There he goes, shuffling through the snow,

the black bear with the white star on his chest,

his blunt nose reading the air, heading for home

where his fellow bruin is already deep

 

in his seasonal sleep. Nearby, the wolves howl

like a chorus warming up for a performance.

Are you lonely, I wonder, out here alone,

unsettled by the change in the weather?

 

But no, he’d be solitary in nature, not half of a duo,

like here at the zoo. He steps across the narrow

stream, snowy bank to snowy bank, no hurry in it,

his shadow long and dark as a winter’s nap.

Yvonne Zipter is the author of the poetry collections The Wordless Lullaby of Crickets, Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound, The Patience of Metal (a Lambda Literary Award Finalist), and Like Some Bookie God. Her poems have appeared in numerous periodicals over the years, including Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, Metronome of Aptekarsky Ostrov (Russia), Bellingham Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. Her published poems are currently being sold individually in two vending machines in Chicago to raise money for the nonprofit organization Arts Alive Chicago. She was recently nominated for the newly created position of Chicago Poet Laureate. In addition, she is the author of the historical novel Infraction and the nonfiction books Diamonds Are a Dyke’s Best Friend and Ransacking the Closet. She is retired from the University of Chicago Press, where she was a manuscript editor.