Selected Poems
by Lindsey Wayland
photography by Sara Tasker
Owl Song
She comes to perch upon the branches
of an old birch tree. The boughs and mottled leaves
swing down to its papery trunk.
She sits above me, I close my yes.
She whos: who, who, whoo. Who is she?
She is Baba Yaga on a chicken leg, all wisdom afoot.
Wisdom from her stomach.
She is wise and wild—she muddles instincts in a mortar,
she brews inner-knowing—
the antiquity of her womb speaks clear:
if it’s not a yes, it’s a no.
It can be that simple.
It’s darker than dusk. The moon long gone,
into another sky. I’m praying to open
my eyes in the dark and the owl flies right over
my head, her black shadowed wingspan as big as a bed.
I am making room for the wild woman—waking now,
from a cherry wood bed frame, hard feet alight the floor:
wise woman, wide woman—
woman with instincts as wide as a house.
The Forest of Motherhood
Before I knew she was pregnant,
her lumpy stomach contracted
in the hallway, and one by one
three kittens emerged. Without
ceremony, without hesitation, she became
a new mother and licked the ammonia
from her babies. She never looked
back over her shoulder; she saved
her strength. She did what she could.
And then we left them, one by one,
in this town or that town.
And they were buried or fed milk
by this hand or that hand.
And I didn’t envy the mother cat,
her nipples tugged, her milk devoured
by this mouth or that mouth.
And I did envy the mother cat
her neck nuzzled, her face cuddled
by this face or that face.
As I wander the forest of motherhood,
my owl neck rotates back to
the many creatures I have been before—
the time I was the tree,
the tall, tall tree. And, I was the forest.
The whole forest. I was the inchworm,
dedicated and persistent. And, I know I am
the cat, with wide round eyes,
with tugged nipples, drained milk,
my neck nuzzled, my face cuddled.
I protect my children,
I protect my motherhood:
I do all I can.
Lindsey Wayland
Lindsey Wayland is a poet, pioneer, a letter writer, a self-taught calligrapher, and a ceremony facilitator. Her poetry has been published in Red River Review. She is one of the founding workshop facilitators of the Confluence Poets in Washington where she lives with her husband and two children in a quaint farmhouse by the river. She writes poetic adventures of a simple, handcrafted life in her online journal lindseywayland.com.
