Praise
Praise the spider in the grass, the tiny DeKay’s brown snake under the pine straw that uncoils to prey as the spider climbs from blade to blade to prey. Praise the beetles and the skinks and the anoles in the brush pile, the goldfinch on the aster stalks, the mourning doves singing grief into the dawn. Praise the rabbit den under the bed of goldenrods, praise the moles and voles and chipmunks digging holes all over my yard, the squirrels fleeing my dog’s yips and barks and fangs. Praise the possum he cornered last spring, her survival, her progeny. Praise the sheets of rain shivering across what’s not mine. Praise what is stewarded, not owned but seen.
Wende Crow’s poems and stories have appeared in Ploughshares, LIT, New Haven Review, Inquisitive Eater, and Hartskill Review, among other journals. She received her MFA from the New School and teaches poetry for the International Writer’s Institute in Amsterdam.