Poems by Laura Budofsky Wisniewski

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At the Window After a Great Snowfall Waiting for You to Come Home

by Laura Budofsky Wisniewski

From Canary Winter 2020-21

Laura lives in the central Lake Champlain Valley, in the Lewis Creek Watershed, a lovely little tributary of which runs through her land. The plants and wildlife of Lewis Creek are currently being threatened by a drastic rise in housing and commercial development.

Sometimes at dusk,
the past stirs in my body
like a sleeping child.

Remember that meteor shower,
how the lips of the darkness opened
and rogue stars streaked white confessions
into the ear of our years?

Even before the wide white of your high beams,
I hear your studded tires crackle on the ice.


Previously published in the author’s chapbook, How to Prepare Bear.



Elegy for the Polar Ice Caps

by Laura Budofsky Wisniewski

From Canary Spring 2022

There are only twelve of us left. Four boats.
The Old Man says help the pregnant girl
into the one that’s been blessed,
but she climbs in by herself.
I look back
as if there were still a village.
All known things have already floated
out toward the horizon.
So this is what it’s like
to leave,
with no one waving goodbye.

We have food and water for seven days,
and our fishing lines.
After that, if it doesn’t rain, we’ll die.
The Grandmothers are praying,
faces lifted, voices rough as straw.
They are praying the long ago story
of when the Earth was a brand new child
scrubbed clean in the salty sea, but in that story
the ocean was clear to the bottom,
filled with magical dolphins
and the very air
could sing.




Radioactive Boars Claim Fukushima Province

by Laura Budofsky Wisniewski

From Canary Spring 2018

From the cool shade of the Fukushima Forest,
the wild boars look up.
Government drones are delivering bombs to the grasslands
like teats squirting milk into the mouths of sucklings.
Cesium 137 has been good to the wild boars.
At night, they lie down on embroidered pillows
in the empty houses of Katsurao Village.
They stroll broken avenues in early Spring
while delicate pink petals
float onto their black bristled humps.
The Kishus, once sleek with scraps from human plates,
now cower and run, nothing but ribs and white tails.
The wheel of dharma circles like a goldfish in a pond.
Humans and their dogs wander homeless.
The wild boars harvest great fortune,
great fortune.




Roshoshona

by Laura Budofsky Wisniewski

From Canary Fall 2014

birthday of the world.
golden ginger, macoun, early mac
birthday of apples.
of cinamon, cardomom, vanilla, clove.

there is
an opening in the darkness through which we crown.
the leaves of maple, beech, silver birch
wash us with their turning
as the white-footed mouse licks her blind baby clean.

you can ask forgiveness of
brother, sister, lost children wandering, beautiful lover,
       the dead.
you can ask forgiveness of god
almighty, merciful, wrathful, impotent, human.

I ask forgiveness of the world
wronged, bleeding, mute
that offers
chrysanthemum, marjoram, sweet grass, wild carrot.
the things
not the names.




Things We Will Forget about Whales

by Laura Budofsky Wisniewski

From Canary Winter 2019-20

How the shy ones sang only in the green lagoons of their birth,
how they swam to the last northern light,
how they spoke in the pang of our language
though they longed for the sounds of each other,
how the mothers lifted the corpses
that we would see their sorrow,
and how at the end
they forgave us
as if we would live together
in a kingdom
of blue kindess,
endless.




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