At Spruce and Oak Streets
they are sleeping.
Their knit caps have been pulled
smugly over their ears.
Their cheeks are a rose brown,
frozen numb under inches and
inches of calming snow.
But then they feel the
sudden pressure
of a boy’s snowmobile boots
across the layers above.
They awake, alarmed,
but remember that in spring
the garrulous soil will weaken,
adopt them as their own.
They dream of sprouting green,
taking a firmer stance
against the tiring seasons.

This Way to the Acorns: Poems (The Tenth Anniversary Edition)

As a boy growing up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Raymond Luczak delighted in the mysterious attractions of nature in a huge expanse of abandoned woods and fields known as “across the street.” In This Way to the Acorns, he remembers encountering unexpected guests of the woods: a scraggly fox, a starving doe, an industrious chipmunk,…

This Way to the Acorns: Poems (The Tenth Anniversary Edition) →