Sample Poems by Wendy Barker

Sometimes

when I am whispering
to myself about you

as I go, leaves begin
to sound like your voice

as if that song could
settle into me, now.

 
Coloring

of the pond has turned reed brown,
yellow, red, orange, purple,
lavender where those ripples

slant under the indigo
of the shadows, clouds
pooling lilies in the cove

but already everything
has changed, sun shift, wind
clearing even memory.

 
You Standing

in a field of fallen
green apples. I am dreaming

this I believe. You are
upright above a sea of

dropped unripe fruit, looking
off as green mist lifts to

branches, twigs of the scarred
trees around you, as green air

opens, uncurls fronds, leaves
through the whole wood. You

have not yet moved among
these buds, this whispering.

 
Through

layers of rock the softer
dirt collects, fountains with moist
leaves of mint, scilla, purple
hyacinth, and primula.

                    *

Boundaries, margins, hedgerows.
Maintaining separate fields.
But the leaves, branches, white hair
of roots press beyond fences.

                    *

The clouds have woven countries.
Rain falls here and somewhere else
you might be moving, your feet
touching the same earth as mine.