#black nature

And now, clear and fugitive, in jack-in-the-box brilliance,
The baby whale blooms:
Wild world, wild messenger—you are the moment’s crown, sea-loved:
When providence brims to the outermost land,
No lack, no lack, but in my human mind.

—Cyrus Cassells, from “Down From the Houses of Magic,” Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry

On Gull Hill, in the flaming garden, God flings
A fistful of robin redbreasts—razzamatazz.
And the reed of the supple mind bends and shivers,
And the choirlike, match-stemmed, fiercely gallant flowers:
Johnny-jump-up, pert buttercup, anemone, peony, lupine,
The first lightning-white rose dying to open
Beneath the systole and diastole of a starry night,
Iris, allium, the proferred chalices of tulips,
The colors of a fabulous dusk in Tunisia;
Coming soon, a pleasure of freesias, a pleasure.

—Cyrus Cassells, from “Down from the Houses of Magic,” Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry

i must be careful not to shake
anything in too wild an elation. not to jar
the fragile mountains against the paper far-
ness. nor avalanche the fog or the eagle from the air.
of the gentle wilderness i must set the precarious
words. like rocks. without one snowcapped mistake

—Ed Roberson, from “be careful,” Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry