Sparkle! Poetry of Resistance and Desire

April Poetry Month begins tomorrow. I’m sliding in a few poems in advance as March goes out like a lion this morning here in Bend. Yesterday was like the Sting song, “All Four Seasons,” with wind, sun, hail, rain, and shapeshifter clouds. The unpredictability of it all spoke to me. When gray rain clouds lowered all the way to the Earth, I felt ALIVE. Ready. We will be fierce together. Resist the oligarchy. Link arms. Be the storytellers who will put forward a narrative for America not of fear, hate, and dictatorship but full of our greatest power–LOVE.

Sparkle

I am walking by the Deschutes River. Whitewater all bling sparkle.
How to turn around when Red-winged Blackbirds sing sparkle.

Why did I listen when told not to title a workshop sparkle?
Yes to glimmer, glitter, flicker and glisten. No to wing sparkle.

Scrub the cliché away even as sun polishes my eyes in sparkle.
Smear paint over the trite despised word. Fling sparkle.
*
Hand closes over silver sparking rays. Drown the sparkle?
Blackbird konk-la-rees whisk cattail fluff breezing Spring sparkle.

Open my fist. Claim every word I want to write. Sparkle
as blackbirds ring riverside marsh awakening in bling sparkle.

Trills held, repeated, and declared. Doubling down on melody sparkle.
Showering endless gold coins on a stolen day from winter’s sting sparkle.

Beaks tipped up to the sun tossing konk-la-reeeeees. Upswing sparkle.
Calling Marina Marina as the Deschutes speaks in everything sparkle.

– Marina Richie (A Ghazal poem)

Map of Our Extinction (United States 2025)

“Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the Earth without making it unfit for all life?”– Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962

Mapmakers get ready. Gulf of Greed.
Ocean of Oil. Country of Clearcuts.
State of Smokestacks. Region of Rapaciousness.

Map “Maximize timber production on public lands”
as the last Spotted Owl lies crushed under the last
great tree of a denuded ancient forest.

As oil companies cheer chucking the Migratory Bird
Treaty Act of 1918. Map “Drill Baby Drill” as the final
Trumpeter Swan glides into a toxic pit of chemicals.

Map Parks Paved Over. Turn National Parks
from Yellowstone to Yosemite to the Great Smoky
Mountains over to real estate tycoons. Map Public Lands Sold.
*
Tear up the Clean Water Air Act. Chant “Spill Baby Spill.”
Map Rivers on Fire. Back to the good old days.
Cuyahoga River oil slicks flaming out of control.

Let the poor, the brown, and the undocumented
choke on sulphur and mercury. Clean Air Act
eviscerated. Map Billionaires Always Live Upwind.

Who listens to annoying birds in a dawn chorus?
Bring back DDT. Spray mosquitos and children again.
Map Silent Spring. Ban Rachel Carson’s book.

Will we stand by steamrolled, bulldozed,
and bludgeoned by the onslaught?
Draw Our Maps. Take Back Nature.

I want America the Beautiful
from Sea to Shining Sea.
I want to be as brave as Rachel Carson.

– Marina Richie

Longing to Rewind the Clock

The tip of your nose
like a ship’s scraping prow
slices into a lost forest sighing

where I wander blinded,
casting my arms wildly
into thundering clouds

reaching for the twirl
of your fingers around
a daisy, the whistling

breeze interrupted
by a thud of stone
dropped by Raven

right on the azimuth
tipping celestial clocks
ticking heartbeats,

etching tree rings stained
blue by tunneling beetles
in a grove where dusk falls.

Starlight tastes like cool indigo
melting on my thirsty tongue,
your spirit a distant hooting

as my body rotates clockwise
over misted mountains
where bats fling treble clefs

across a music staff. I catch
sixteenth notes in my mouth,
echolocating desire.

-Marina Richie

Resurrection

Cracks splinter into a star exploding
across concentric growth rings
cut off. But soon moss will hush
my loss. Mother Tree will caress
my amputation in bless. Her roots
cloaked in fungi a trembled current.
Her life kiss urgent as the weedy vine
entwining my stump.

– Marina Richie

Every Note a Lingering

Driving down the sleepy main street of Prairie City
below Strawberry Mountains thirty years after I left,
I stop at the corner gas station. Roll down my window.
Our eyes lock. The attendant vaguely familiar. She speaks.

“We planted trees together. You played your flute at every break.”
A puzzle piece snaps in place. Weight of pine saplings
wrapped in wet burlap. Paid fifty dollars a day to drop to my knees.
Tamp soil around a straggled root.

Ears ringing from chainsaw blare. Men auguring holes.
Get up. Steady a canvas bag stuffed full of tiny trees.
Walk ten feet. Drop to next drilled hole. Rise. Fall. Rise.
Wipe dirt from my face. Steps become a stagger. Rest.

Barbara—strongest, steadiest, the hometown girl.
Unflappable. Turns to me. “Play for us.” Her voice
commanding as a Pileated Woodpecker drumming
into the blessed silence of repose in the shade.

I lift my flute, a horizontal branch. Sure fingers cover open
holes. My body sways with trees leaning left of the clearcut.
I release arpeggios of daisy chains. Nectared notes
patter down on sweat-stained, long sleeved

cotton shirts, dirty blue jeans, Redwing work boots.
Our crew guzzling lukewarm water from plastic jugs.
A Swainson’s Thrush sings spiraled chords surging skyward.
Young muscled men lift their heavy augurs. Break over.

A silver flute stills in the snapped-shut case in our living room.
Three pieces too long separated. Encased in cobalt felt.
My husband’s kind insistence. He longs to hear the notes.
I tell myself I will play first when he’s away. But I fear

Poor tone, feeble embouchure, weak muscles
around my lips, my breeze over the mouthpiece
dusty air spewed upon barren ground. So rusty
field mice would scamper away.

My father gave me the Anderson open-holed flute
when I turned fourteen. The best gift every from him,
Even better than the Swiss Army pocketknife engraved with my name.
Once, I trilled notes from a sandstone ledge above the Colorado River

as pure tones of a Canyon Wren glissaded off a rainbow.
Cross-legged, bare-breasted and sunburned, I mimicked
a small russet bird with perked tail perched above me.
Thin beak open. Every note a lingering ripe berry falling.

At the gas station. Her forest eyes glinting green in spring.
A breeze plumes white plum blossoms. Her steps quick
as a fox. Deer-brown hair streaked in driftwood gray.
Her lips part, “Do you still play?”

–Marina Richie

The Impressionist

Wine libation spills bluebells upon picnic
awash in vireo incandescence
as wood sprites blush poppies and primrose

Taste oak and linden in oriole caress
blanketing pastels with wren song
as Cezanne brushes tanagers of susurration

–Marina Richie

With gratitude to my Ekphrastic Poetry Group for critiques and support, and to poet Laurel Benjamin for curating the art, facilitating, and giving so generously to other poets.

SATURDAY APRIL 5TH IS A DAY OF ACTION. HANDS OFF!