ODE WITH ENCAMPMENT & CROWS NEST
by TESS TAYLOR
Pedaling today in persimmon light,
past stucco bungalows, lemongrass, trumpetvine,
red-tailed hawk on live oak,
I think of riding my bike as one tiny good
I can do to live well among others:
this woman eating her fudgy popsicle,
that man practicing his flyfishing cast
again and again on the thin strip of park.
We’re each out in tangerine dusk
on the afternoon of another school shooting:
air pulsing with sad current,
as I push my thighs hard against sorrow and fury,
trying once again
not to despair. To not only despair.
To name my love for this world
of encampment & crow’s nest
& sharp rock-dust after rain.
For a reason I cannot explain
I keep turning over a snippet of scripture:
—“put on the armor of light”—
I hardly know what this is—
they say it at Advent—the words
strange as sailing open & fragile
at dusk after a day full of violence
past other children out marching
through puddles in rainboots.
At the corner, the Happ- Cleane-s sign
holds fast one more day.
Over the fence, a man’s call to prayer,
his voice a lone minaret.
It is Friday: Our neighbor lights candles.
Winter: Buffleheads sleep on the bay.
I pedal. The dark comes. I feel myself heaving.
In my ears some plangent song blooms
—gods may we yet build the peaceable kingdom—
—life may we yet tend forward your gifts—
JAM ODE
by TESS TAYLOR
Out one December morning
picking a lemon
& smelling its sharp oil
warm on my skin
& coming inside to squeeze it
over summer’s plums—
(they’ve been frozen since June
& now they hiss open,
losing skin & shape in the pot);
my hands are bruise-colored
as beside them I pare
violet flesh from the pits
I’ll save them for plum liquor—
& overhear myself thinking
I don’t expect
more from this life.
Anything else would be
different—not better—this is a fullness–
I’m heating another pot
to thaw the pectin
we made from apples
Terry gave us when fires
came near our house & ash fell for days
so we fled to his farm.
The winter’s beam
is a toppled cathedral.
Dipping jars in hot water
undoes a numbness.
This year’s jam
is thick livid purple—
each bubble more viscous
than the next—
Tess Taylor’s work deals with place, ecology, memory and cultural reckoning. She’s published five poetry collections, including Rift Zone, one of the Boston Globe’s best books of 2020, and Work & Days, one of the NY Times’s best poetry books of 2016. As 2024-2025 Poet Laureate of El Cerrito, she received an Academy of American Poets Fellowship to create poetry programming for West Contra Costa’s diverse public schools. A staged adaptation of her book Last West—about the life of photographer Dorothea Lange—premiered to a sold-out run at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art in 2025 and will tour California in 2026. Her next book, Come Bite, will be out from Milkweed in 2027.
Next (Acie Clark) >
< Previous (James Davis May)