Of Warbler and Quail by Rae Spencer

Drab little she in the brush
Muttering her song to lure
Someone else

But only I respond
Drawn across the dune
To listen closer

As a child I spoke to quail
I whistled out their bobwhite name
To hear them shriek it back

But this little warbler
Outside my beachfront door
Her accent slips my ear

Measures of water wisdom
Refrains of woven nest
Codas that fall silent

Because I have come too near
To understanding
What is lovely on this shore

Of daily tide
Of sandy soil and storms
Of quickening flocks

That speak their sea-swept names
In secret tangled tongues
Of salty sail and oar

And then they fly away
While I struggle, yearn to say
What I remember of briars

Of dry summer streams
And winter dreams
Of silent quail

Hungry among the thistle
Of home, my distant valley home
So many years from here


Rae Spencer

Finalizing Our Aged Property by Rae Spencer

The exhausted land reclaimed

Our fence-line
Time blanketed
Obscene barbs
With perfumed honeysuckle

A million twining flowers

With steely resolution
Wrested rusty strands
Toward the soil

A war of decades

Waged on a suspension bridge
Sagging posts and braided wire
Fatigued by the surprising weight
Of so many fragile vines

At last the posts cracked

In surrender
Gave up their substance
To termites and rain

And our boundaries

Crumbled into joyous ruin

Nothing left of fences
To say where we should end
And something else begin


Rae Spencer, Virginia, USA

The Plume by Rae Spencer

The seabed disgorged its hoarded store
Of compressed ages, liquefied ore of fossil
Climes tapped by the drill and pipe
Toxic artery braced open, uncapped history

Spewing toward this current delicate
Shore, this frail balance in air that spoils
What earth and time preserve, sifted
Over with sand and ash, crusted

With stone, ruins of bone recorded
And lost beneath layers of investigation
Which quarry for the line that leads
Back, the shale trail to before

Blossoming plume of rune and tale, raw
Mix adrift, dangerous slick atop the waves
Tempting prism of our past set aflame
By cryptic sparks of scholarly interpretation.


Rae Spencer, Virginia, USA

Listen by Rae Spencer

Can you hear the whales?

Long slow sea chanteys
Rhythm paced by the meter of waves
Graceful arcs of melody
Race with neap voices
Toward the shore

Living swells of tidal muses
With curls of seafoam tresses

Refrains shatter into salty spray
Spill notes upon the sand
And slip inside wind

In graceful prism arcs
Whalesong leaves the sea

To lisp among trees
Where rustling leaves
Keep company with time

Can you hear the wolves?

Long slow forest choruses
In unnamed minor keys
Filled with promised futures
Hunger weaves through molting trees
Down and down to seas

These breathing moonlit muses
Swell their throats with lore

A choir of hunters
Eyes and ears and tongues uplifted
Return the sea’s salt voice

An ebbing echo of whales
Rolls across the shore

And between these native singers
All the wisdom born in time
Falls with autumn’s leaves


Rae Spencer, Virginia, USA