[Oe List ...] Fwd: “Postures of Devotion” by Kimberly Blaeser
Milan Hamilton
mellowmilan2 at gmail.com
Thu Nov 20 10:17:00 PST 2025
I've been a member of this network, Academy of American Poets, for several
years. It includes a Poem a Day featuring a variety of poets, and on
weekends selected ones of the "dead poets society". This particular poem
really got to me this morning, especially as I read it while listening to
the audio of the poet reading her own poem. You have to listen to it
for its full impact I think. .Some poets just know how to read their own
poetry and some don't. Enjoy, Milan
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Poem-a-Day | Poets.org <poem-a-day at poets.org>
Date: Thu, Nov 20, 2025 at 3:08 AM
Subject: “Postures of Devotion” by Kimberly Blaeser
To: Milan <mellowmilan2 at gmail.com>
Before me Kawishiwi stretches— / river a palette of frost. Nearby
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͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
*November 20, 2025*
*donate*
<https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=a8427b80ae&e=4369bc6895>
*Postures of Devotion*
<https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=433f84cbf2&e=4369bc6895>
*Kimberly Blaeser*
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*—after **Kaveh Akbar*
<https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=44fb71767c&e=4369bc6895>*’s
“**Poetry and Spirituality*
<https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=ed82788498&e=4369bc6895>
*”*
Before me Kawishiwi stretches—
river a palette of frost. Nearby
glazed berries dot the cranberry bushes,
melt into mirage. Icicles
too drip remembrance.
But metaphors of a world asleep
fail this place where even now
a pileated woodpecker beats a rhythm
of search—repeats, day by day deeper.
Watch while the leafless oak opens.
Beneath the protective skin
of tree, more hard-shelled beings—
bark beetles, exoskeletons of ants.
Hear the purr of wings landing,
jarring rattle as head recites hunger.
Watch the red blur of devotion—
manic as our soul, our alone.
Yet steadily each body maps resilience.
Where survival turns with planet,
chases the sun, wait is a courage
we name winter. Beneath ice
mink, muskrat, and otter swim,
stalk sleek shadows of fish.
Woodland dwellers find feast each season—
oh despair, make that your gospel.
Still, forest grandmothers—all roots
trunks and limbs—uphold their pact.
In rhythm of warm days and freezing
nights, tree roots suction, sap spills
through bark wounds. Then our tongues
sticky with spring—then, our song.
But, in January, we hold this promise.
While lake ice shifts, dark a murmur,
a creak. Now moonlight falls on snow crusts—
always where two touch, night glistens.
When distant wolf howls, answer comes.
Imagine the upturned muzzle, body
a triangle of sound. Hazel eyes
mere slits. This reverence—an ancient hunger
for pack. See, too, each black branch
limbing—bare, suspended in soon.
How pristine the listening posture
of pine marten, of fisher, of fox—
each body cocked. To pounce, to dive
nose-first into snow’s secrets,
to search winter tunnels for mice.
We, too, poised like supplicants—
rawness of the world a prayer
we read but cannot speak. Silence
an invocation, heavy as tobacco
sinking into snow—into earth’s altar.
Against moon’s brilliance, slit your eyes.
Let warmth of reflected light fill you;
that holy—that glance of tiny gods.
Make of your hands an empty globe,
your body a vessel taut as river.
Copyright © 2025 by Kimberly Blaeser. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on
November 20, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
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*about this poem*
“The phrase ‘postures of devotion’ stayed with me after I heard Kaveh Akbar
<https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=4296763c44&e=4369bc6895>’s
talk ‘Poetry and Spirituality
<https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=9317e5c303&e=4369bc6895>.’
I think about different ways devotion can be embodied, and I filled this
poem with the more-than-human beings—wolves, woodpeckers, pine martens, and
maple trees—whose gestures express devotion; express, in their own way,
reverence and faith. The poem invites an expansion of these spiritual terms
and a closer look at the intricacies of the world. It attends to seasonal
cycles and traces the way the everyday miraculous can inspire our own
transformation. Here and elsewhere, I write in praise of the ‘tiny gods’
who also spill holiness.”
*—Kimberly Blaeser*
[image: Kimberly Blaeser]
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Kimberly Blaeser
<https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=abb9215bc5&e=4369bc6895>
is an Indigenous poet and the author of six books of poems, including *Ancient
Light: Poems* (University of Arizona Press, 2024). A former Wisconsin poet
laureate, Blaeser is an MFA faculty member for the Institute of American
Indian Arts in Santa Fe and an emeritus professor of English and Indigenous
studies at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. In 2020, she founded the
literary organization Indigenous Nations Poets (In-Na-Po), and, in November
2021, served as a Guest Editor for Poem-a-Day. Blaeser lives in Burlington,
Wisconsin.
more at poets.org
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[image: Ancient Light]
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(University of Arizona Press, 2024)
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*related poems*
*“The Head of the Cottonmouth” by Roger Reeves*
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*r*
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Thanks to Tacey M. Atsitty, author of *(At) Wrist*
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of Wisconsin Press, 2023), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s
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Mellow Milan Hamilton
80 North Center Street
Redlands, CA 92373
Phone: (909) 943-1667
email: mellowmilan2 at gmail.com
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