After a career teaching English to midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy, Nancy Arbuthnot now enjoys spending time with friends and family, reading, writing and translating poetry, and leading art and poetry workshops for the homeless in Washington, DC. Her recent publications include Blue Rhapsodies: Poems of a Navy Life, about her life as the daughter of a navy test pilot and as a professor at the United States Naval Academy; and two collections of illustrated poems, Postcards from the Border: Meditations in Ink and Watercolor, about her experiences on the US-Mexico border, and Remember Me Singing: A Catoctin Mountain Alphabet of poems and illustrations of the flora and fauna of Catoctin Mountain Park in MD, where Nancy was Artist-in-Residence in 2020 and 2021. Nancy has also co-translated Waves Beyond Waves, poems about Vietnamese American poet Le Pham Le’s journey from Vietnam to America. Her current projects include “The House on Dahlia Street: a Parenting Memoir” of poetry, prose and watercolor sketches.
What is life but mist
a fog rolling in
erasing distance
erasing nearness
sound muffled, sight blurred
touch only remains
to guide our footsteps
to thrill our fingers
lightly my fingers
trace your lips, eyelids
red pulse of heartblood
catch of your breathing
mist clears to vision
piercing us keenly
here in this city
love, where we linger
1 - Berry Woods Preserve, Late August
Summer lingers longer now
In the woods, along the shore.
Trees hold green, terns dip and bow.
Summer lingers longer now.
Years ago, oaks waved red boughs
in mid-August; no terns soared.
Summer lingers longer now
In the woods, along the shore.
2 - Autumn Sonata
sycamore, oak and maple
conduct a light percussive music
of leaves released to leaves
already fallen
and the abandoned hammock
flips over and over in the wind
filling, spilling,
refilling with light
3 - Winter Birds
to the bare oak’s tangled choirs
they come to glean--
tufted titmouse, dipping
bobbing black-capped chickadee
nuthatch pecking head-first
down the tree--
and the cardinal
stitching a red rope through the brown scene—
oh, the joy they bring
ancient species
from the Pliocene
deep diver
beach-stranded
what can we who come
to pay homage offer
but witness to your fading
white mandible blaze
flutter and fall
of your banded fin’s curve?
how can we bid farewell
except in imagination trace
the deep migrations
to ease you home?
1
motionless in tidal wash
neck stretched long, awaiting
the most propitious moment
before striking—
then slowly, elegantly, powerfully
rising, stitching the sky with its flight
2
spangled iridescence
rides the swells
splashes, flutters
rock-rests, wings spread:
oh, whatever the weather
storm winds or following seas
to reign with such regal detachment
over the deeps--
3
aglitter with minnows
at ebb tide and full flow
black-capped acrobats
hover and plummet
kee-urr!
kee-urr!
how far
the harsh cries carry
