Mission Viejo Authors & Artists

A Lot I Know

by Anna Odessa Linzer*

from her recent collection of poems in Season Unleashed

My meditation walk takes me along the same worn path,

always new, always silently speaking to me,

and today I see how the fern fronds are

raggedly chopped off, as by a sharp scythe slung

by madman or a child,

along the path, under fir and cedar,

and then I recognize the desperate deer hunger

eating what is inedible on every other

week of the year

and I know that we have reached,

fallen into,

the bottom of winter.

Returning, just outside the meditation room, I see delicate

white snowdrop blossoms that I had missed the morning’s

darkness, now held in the arms of the first sun,

and I know, here is spring, rising, warm and full,

from the bottom of winter.

The next morning, I wake

to the silence of snow blanketing

the woods, the frozen pond, the roof,

and I know a little

of what I do not know

of the bottom of winter

*Anna Linzer is an American Book Award-winning novelist and poet. For her entire life, she has lived along the Salish Sea in the state of Washington. She is of Norwegian-Lenape heritage who lived on the Suquamish Port Madison Indian Reservation and Shaw IsLand in the rainforest along the Hoh River. Her novel Ghost Dancing (Picador/St.Martin’s Press) received an American Book Award in 1999. Her novels Blind Vigil, Dancing on Water and A River Story were produced as the handbound, limited-edition Home Waters by fine-arts publisher Marquand Books.

First Light

In the cove below the Treehouse

there is a single spotted Harbor Seal.

The only one in the bay,

maybe in the world this morning.

She slips beneath the water and flies

just under the still surface.

Diving deeper, she takes with her

the rest of my day,

leaving only her slender brush stroke of white

light in the pewter grey dawn.

Anna Linzer

*Anna Linzer is an American Book Award-winning novelist and poet. For her entire life, she has lived along the Salish Sea in the state of Washington. She is of Norwegian-Lenape heritage who lived on the Suquamish Port Madison Indian Reservation and Shaw IsLand in the rainforest along the Hoh River. Her novel Ghost Dancing (Picador/St.Martin’s Press) received an American Book Award in 1999. Her novels Blind Vigil, Dancing on Water and A River Story were produced as the handbound, limited-edition Home Waters by fine-arts publisher Marquand Books.