Buckeye as You Are

Buckeye as You Are

By Wendy Rose b. 1948 Wendy Rose

September 11, 2001


They walk past you
                                        weeping
                              for the leaves that burnt
                              & fell, the wood exposed
                              like bone, sculpture
                    that suddenly emerges
                    from white haze.
You old fortune-teller,
you could have told them
in their vibrant grief
whispering through the night wind
your breath held in your heart
like the trembling promise of tomorrow,
just before dawn
                    there was no pain
                             you are the wood
                                       not the leaf,
                                                 falling is not
                                                           falling but
                                                                     offering.

Wendy Rose, “Buckeye as You Are” from Itch Like Crazy. Copyright © 2002 by Wendy Rose. Reprinted by permission of University of Arizona Press.

Source: Itch Like Crazy (University of Arizona Press, 2002)

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Poet Wendy Rose b. 1948

POET’S REGION U.S., Southwestern

Subjects Living, Sorrow & Grieving, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict

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Biography

Wendy Rose, born Bronwen Elizabeth Edwards in Oakland, California, is of Hopi, Miwok, and European descent. An artist, writer, and anthropologist, she is the author of the poetry collections Academic Squaw: Reports to the World from the Ivory Tower (1977); What Happened When the Hopi Hit New York (1982); The Halfbreed Chronicles and Other Poems (1985); Lost Copper (1980), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; and Bone Dance: . . .

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Poems by Wendy Rose

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SUBJECT Living, Sorrow & Grieving, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict

POET’S REGION U.S., Southwestern

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Originally appeared in Poetry magazine.

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