April 27: Peril Sonnet
Martha
Peril Sonnet
David Baker
Where do you suppose
they’ve gone the bees now
that you don’t see them
anymore four-winged
among flowers low
sparks in the clover
even at nightfall
are they fanning have
they gone another
place blued with pollen
stuck to their bristles
waiting beyond us
spring dwindle is what
we call it collapsing
neonicotinoids
high levels in pneu-
matic corn exhaust”
loss of habitat
or disappearing
disease in the way
of our kind so to speak
what do you think
they would call it
language older than
our ears were they
saying it all along
even at daybreak —
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The past is a foreign country:
2025: De'an, Heid E. Erdrich
2024: Witness, Crystal Wilkinson
2023: from Burial, Ross Gay
2022: Ode to Tortillas, José Olivarez
2021: Say Thank You Say I’m Sorry, Jericho Brown
2020: The Restoration, Gary Jackson
2019: The Termite, Ogden Nash
2018: Elegy, W.S. Merwin
2017: Young Wife’s Lament, Brigit Pegeen Kelly
2016: For the Confederate Dead, Kevin Young
2015: Awaking in New York, Maya Angelou
2014: when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story, Gwendolyn Brooks
2013: Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey, Hayden Carruth
2012: My Place, Franz Wright
2011: from The Wild Geese, Wendell Berry
2010: Love After Love, Derek Walcott
2009: To This May, W.S. Merwin
2008: Father, Ted Kooser
2007: from Little Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight, Galway Kinnell
2006: Crusoe in England, Elizabeth Bishop
2005: Dream Song 1, John Berryman