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Twice a year
creaky angles
of cranes
stalk squawk
whole meadows
grazing full
circle. Nesting
pairs fatten
one hatchling
apiece.
Wide, thrummed
wings about to spread
the oldest music
we know~
wings
drumming~
our breaths
blown
through wing bones
of long-limbed
relatives
gawky
on land,
melodies
rising.
 Peggy
Shumaker's lyrical memoir Just Breathe Normally
(U. of Nebraska Press) grew from brief pieces written
after a severe wreck. Her most recent book of poems
is Blaze, a collaboration with Alaskan painter Kesler
Woodward (Red Hen Press). She has received a National
Endowment on the Arts Fellowship in poetry and several
awards for teaching. Her work has been published
in Canada, Australia, Russia, Japan, New Zealand,
England, and throughout the USA. She will present
poems at the Poetic Ecologies Conference in Brussels
in 2008. Her work is being translated into Farsi
for an anthology that will be published in Iran.
Professor emerita at University of Alaska Fairbanks,
she teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop low-residency
MFA program. Her website is www.peggyshumaker.com.
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