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@poets.org> Date: Thu, Nov 20, 2025 at 3:08 AM Subject: “Postures of Devotion” by Kimberly Blaeser To: Milan <mellowmilan2@gmail.com> Before me Kawishiwi stretches— / river a palette of frost. Nearby ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ *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* <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=6a13804caa&e=4369bc6895> *—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. *more poetry* *listen* <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=6b11e2ffc8&e=4369bc6895> *today’s poem* *read* <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=a7d489b61a&e=4369bc6895> *weekly newsletter* *learn* <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=1e2f858b6f&e=4369bc6895> *literary seminars* *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] <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=b40121dcb4&e=4369bc6895> 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 <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=331296dbb1&e=4369bc6895> [image: Ancient Light] <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=f3d71c95a9&e=4369bc6895> *Ancient Light* <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=78a8138d65&e=4369bc6895> (University of Arizona Press, 2024) buy the book <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=8e12365ff4&e=4369bc6895> *related poems* *“The Head of the Cottonmouth” by Roger Reeves* *read more* <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=49d3878dfe&e=4369bc6895> *“Habilitas” by Rodrigo Toscano* *r* <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=2ebb5689fb&e=4369bc6895>*ead more* <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=cdad198c24&e=4369bc6895> *this month’s guest editor* Thanks to Tacey M. Atsitty, author of *(At) Wrist* <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=e7c36aaedc&e=4369bc6895> (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read or listen to a Q&A <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=0d639446ee&e=4369bc6895> about Atsitty’s curatorial approach and find out more about our Guest Editors for the year <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=5791a641e3&e=4369bc6895> . *support poem-a-day* “Poem-a-Day is brilliant because it makes space in the everyday racket for something as meaningful as a poem.” —Tracy K. Smith If this series is meaningful to you, join the community of Poem-a-Day supporters by making a gift today <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=07bcc9ed3f&e=4369bc6895>. Now serving more than 320,000 daily subscribers, this publication is only possible thanks to the contributions of readers like you. donate <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=311e1762f7&e=4369bc6895> [image: Logo] <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=c9bebc6998&e=4369bc6895> *Copyright (C) 2025 The Academy of American Poets. All rights reserved.* You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. Our mailing address is: The Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane STE #901 New York, NY 10038 USA Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences <https://the-academy-of-american-poets.mailchimpsites.com/manage/preferences?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=0e208b88ae&e=4369bc6895&c=7837b57b68> or unsubscribe <https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=0e208b88ae&t=b&e=4369bc6895&c=7837b57b68> -- Mellow Milan Hamilton 80 North Center Street Redlands, CA 92373 Phone: (909) 943-1667 email: mellowmilan2@gmail.com