Poetry on the Trail Archive
We continue to celebrate the poets whose work has been previously featured on Poetry on the Trail.
To our previously featured poets who sing of nature’s grace, whose verses capture the wild majesty of forests, streams, and skies, we honor your profound connection to the earth and celebrate the art that nurtures our souls.
Dahlgren Trail Class of 2024
-
The tanager calls from the canopy.
I strain my neck to seek
Through laden oak boughs
A blood orange red amidst
Broad green leaves. I move
Off path into deep verdant shadows
And closer to the bird song but–
Water hums–sharp
Bites around bare ankles
Urge me to move on
Through a hushed pine stand
Where my feet pad quietly on soft carpets
Of loam and fallen blades
And I miss the red dart against an iron sky.
I miss what I pass by.Shared with permission of the author.
Lauren Pilcher is a long-time Stafford County resident who works in higher education. She holds an MA from George Washington University and BA from University of Mary Washington, both in Art History. She is interested in sustainable landscaping and enjoys the many small visitors to her native plant garden. She and her husband are novice (but no less avid) bird watchers.
-
to accept the gift of rain
rising enough to include it
to reflect the sky,
extending its beauty
to flow with the fish,
lending a hand with its current
to allow the wind to nudge,
staving off stagnancy
to travel,
wending its way to the bay.Shared with permission of the author.
Marcie Flinchum Atkins is a teacher-librarian by day and a children’s book writer in the wee hours of the morning. She holds an M.A. and M.F.A. in Children’s Literature from Hollins University. She’s the author of numerous nonfiction books including Wait, Rest, Pause: Dormancy in Nature (Millbrook Press, 2019). Her poetry has been featured in several anthologies for adults and children. Her debut historical fiction verse novel, One Step Forward is forthcoming in 2025 (Versify). Her next nonfiction picture book When Twilight Comes will be published in 2026 (Chronicle). For more information, check out her website: www.marcieatkins.com.
-
The bench appears on the trail
As benches often do—
Nestled in the ideal spot,
An artifact from vista lovers
We sit and call it “kismet”
As if this years-ago creation
Was fated for our just-now choice
Of visiting with this sunset
Across the duck dotted water
The sun lands in the treetops,
Out-stretched limbs receiving it gently
As its vivid serenade ripples across us
Chameleon clouds then cast their spells
Transfixing us for a moment while
They rummage through our memories
Looking for some comparison
Our eyes unwrap forbidden colors:
Orange-mauve and crimson-gold,
And we understand that nature
Keeps making up new rules
“It’s so beautiful,” you whisper.
“Yes” is all I muster.
We look for other words
But they will not come;
They’re sitting on the bench too,
Watching the sky.
Shared with permission by the author.Jon J. Carter is an avid walker and hiker, Virginia Master Naturalist volunteer, and occasional poet. He lives in Fredericksburg, VA, where he and his good friend Helga, a German Wirehaired Pointer mix, are often seen walking the trails and downtown streets.
-
On its side, an oak
trunk, the innards rot
and poison ivy
claims this victim
felled by another
fallen hardwood,
as if trees begrudge
and battle for sun-
light or water
or some slight of limb;
and now over
soft moss, crawling
row on row, the ants
take many dividendsShared with permission by the author.
Heather Brown Barrett is an award-winning poet in southeastern Virginia. She mothers her young son and contemplates life, the universe, and everything with her writer husband. She is a Cherokee Nation citizen, a member of Hampton Roads Writers where she serves on the board and the newsletter staff, and a member and regular student of The Muse Writers Center. Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Yellow Arrow Journal, Black Bough Poetry, OyeDrum Magazine, AvantAppal(achia), and elsewhere. Her first chapbook, Water in Every Room, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. Visit her website.
-
The darkness of one rock
silhouetted to shadow
in the brilliance of the water—
From a shape on the rock
a steady eye,
an agate of alien light—
Away from the darkness of my reflection,
a painted turtle scrabbles
into ripples of gleaming invisibilityShared with permission of the author.
Poem originally published in Heron Tree, Summer 2016.
David Anthony Sam lives in Virginia with his wife, Linda. His poetry has appeared in over 100 journals. Sam’s collection, Stone Bird, was released in 2023 by San Francisco Bay Press. Writing the Significant Soil (Wayfarer Books 2022) was awarded the Homebound Poetry Prize. Six other collections are in print. -
Low-down ground by the stream acts joyful.
Bluebells, trillium? Get out of town with your frilled
carillon. Pink Moon, Grass Moon, Egg Moon,
there’s no call to fling brilliance in this
of all springs. I can’t even with such beauty.
Can’t explain to the ardent lilac.
No words for love-crazed blue jays,
for the cat slinking through lemon-balm.
Calm down, iridescent mist swept
along by always-rising winds. The nerve.
The outrageous auxiliary verb: may be.Shared with permission by the author.
Lesley Wheeler is the author of the forthcoming Mycocosmic, in which "Tone Problem" appears, and five previous poetry collections, including The State She’s In and Heterotopia, winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize. Her other books include the hybrid memoir Poetry’s Possible Worlds and the novel Unbecoming. Her work has received support from the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Bread Loaf, and the Sewanee Writers Workshop, and her poems and essays appear in Poetry, Kenyon Review Online, Poets & Writers, Guernica, Massachusetts Review, Ecotone, and other magazines. Poetry Editor of Shenandoah, she lives in Lexington, Virginia, where she wrote "Tone Problem" during the first spring of the pandemic.
-
The river rustles, a northern watersnake
Sits at the shore's edge, shaded by the hackberry
So much to be done, so little desire to move
across the river. Leave his nook of heaven.Shared with permission of the author.
After twenty-four years in Fort Lauderdale, Ms. Krauss has relocated to Virginia to be closer to her family. Carol was honored to be a UVA Best New Poet. In 2021 her book, Just a Spit Down the Road, was published by Kelsay. Some venues where she has publications are– Louisiana Lit, One Art, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Story South, and Highland Park Poetry, and she was selected for Ghost City Press’ 2023 Micro-Chap Summer Series. Her chapbook, The Old Folks Call it God’s Country, was released by The Poetry Box (April 2024).
Elizabeth River Trail Class of 2024
-
Beetles born out of wedlock carve
family trees into existence.
In their lapse of judgements and laps
of river along the muddied shore, they kill
the sycamore.
A child chalks on rock to remain
a remnant ever reminiscent of where
humanity meets erosion and where
a petrified man’s head turns wood. He is
only revealed at half-moon.
Sycamore stripped bare of bark
gapes open its mouth in hopes of
a misguided wanderer to prey on.
A hunger satiated means nothing to someone who can’t die,
but residue of a traveling soul soothes the toothache
of molding and mossing branches.Shared with permission from the author.
Fairouz Bsharat is a junior Literary Arts major at Appomattox Regional Governor’s School for the Arts and Technology and the current Virginia Youth Poet Laureate for Chester! She has won first place in the Fledge National Writing Competition in the Fiction and Nonfiction categories, been named a young poet in the community by the poetry society of VA, and received two Scholastic Art & Writing Gold keys.
Fairouz has had her work published in GSU’s literary magazine Fledge, Young Writers USA, Virginia Bards Central Review 2022, American High School Poets – May Flowers 2023 anthology, and in The American Library Of Poetry 2023 Empowered. She has also seen first hand how poetry affects the lives of people everywhere. Poetry helps people express themselves! Expression is the best way to avoid conflict. If one has words to cradle them, often their solace is always sought.
-
The coupling of midnight
trains keeps neighbors awake
and each morning we wipe
traces of coal dust from dirty
window sills. All of us cough
to clear our throats, choke
on unfinished dreams.
Lambert’s Point, where ships
dock, hums a few blocks away,
spitting its breath down our streets.
At the intersection of Hampton
and Terminal we wait
for the port to do its work.
Steel wheels scratch the track
and block our path home.
But today music from an amped
up Dodge has us dancing
in our seats and the container
cars rumble like a remixed
Alicia Keys.
If I could only sing I’d stop
all the migrating birds
and ask them why they leave.Shared with permission of the author.
Beth Oast Williams is the author of the chapbook Riding Horses in the Harbor (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her poetry has been accepted for publication in Nimrod, Salamander, Leon Literary Review, SWWIM, One Art, Dialogist, Invisible City and Rattle’s Poets Respond, among others, and nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize.
-
Here, too, the air fills more often now with the sudden
spasm of wings— pausing at the junction for the light
to change, you wonder about metaphors,
about how starlings wheel in unison: at first,
a ribbon wound round and round the milky
breasts of hills, and then no more
than a tiny constellation stippling the sky;
how everything’s feathered by the rhythm
of its own wind, rising and falling
even after the gears have turned.Shared with permission from the author.
During her appointed term as 20th Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2020-22), Emerita, the Academy of American Poets awarded Luisa A. Igloria one of twenty-three Poet Laureate Fellowships in 2021 to support a program of public poetry projects. Luisa is the author of Caulbearer (Immigrant Writing Series Prize, Black Lawrence Press, 2024), Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Co-Winner, 2019 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Prize, Southern Illinois University Press, 2020), The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis (Phoenicia Publishing, Montreal, 2018), and 11 other books.
She is a Louis I. Jaffe Professor of English and Creative Writing in the MFA Program at Old Dominion University, and also leads workshops for and is a member of the board of The Muse Writers Center in Norfolk. http://www.luisaigloria.com.
-
Even the bike rider rushing by
Too hurried to stop – notice poetry on the pavement
Just polite enough to offer this version of Honk,
“Excuse me – on your left!”
“Whoosh!”
But the train
designed for rush
tries to tip toe past and keep to itself
Stops to spend a moment not disturbing my moment,
but reveling in it quietly like a partner
Twice, though, offers that rippling thunder of compress, stretch
One of my favorite soundsShared with permission from the author.
-
Wait for me as I venture out farther and farther,
spreading my memories of this city.
I call out your name like a twisted lover,
your nightly calls shining warm rays into the clouded sky
and your flooded cries asking me to turn back.
Wait for me as I cross that seal,
where a mosaic of peoples align the walk
and mermaids decorate the cornerstones of
the City of Promise. Reflections stretching
along the coast of possibility.
Remember me
and my every step that traced this waterfront –
my first breath to my final tears.
I’ll hold onto the plaques of our history
and our echoes in the water because
You are home.Shared with permission from the author.
Marjorie Cenese is a 2023-24 Young Poet in the Community and formerly the 2022 Hampton Roads Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador for Norfolk. She has performed her poetry for occasions such as the Further Together: Advancing Equity Through Workforce Philanthropy conference and Pharrell’s Mighty Dream Forum. Her work can be found in the Virginia Poets Database, Constellate, Mace & Crown, and The Cupola. Marjorie Cenese is a Bachelors candidate at Old Dominion University majoring in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Engineering Management.
-
On the day they start burning all the
books Shoot me! Put me on top of the pile
Marvel at the flames. Call my name
And then after a while
Douse the heap with passion as steep
As the reader has for writers
Let the Underground Railroad use my embers
As glowing primitive lighters
Let the flames roar and the smoke rise
Spread my ashes over land and sea
And though my words be ostracized
If the trees be fertilized, books shall always be
After the bonfire has dwindled and you lite up your kindles
And books are replaced by nooks
Twill be paper not plastic, that will make you nostalgic
Wherever you see a tree
Yes technology comes with many features
But extra batteries are not included
Not long after your lithium has languished
Your kindle will be excluded
Just give me a hot spring in the woods and a book
With my bath and watch me smile with glee
And though my words be ostracized
If the trees be fertilized, books shall always be
Shared with permission from the author.
Nathan M. Richardson is a published author, performance poet and Frederick Douglass Historian. His poetry collections include Likeness of Being, Twenty-one Imaginary T-shirts and The 7 Last Poems of an Unarmed Citizen. Books featuring Nathan’s success include; You Can Do That (Amazing People with Amazing Jobs) by David Messick and You Don’t Want Success (Demolishing Fears & Excuses) by Miko Marsh. Nathan teaches a variety of workshops for emerging writers and is the creator and host of the Poetry, Prose & Pizza Open Mic series.
He is a former coach and current ambassador-at-large for the Hampton Roads Youth Poets, a division of the youth empowerment organization – Teens with a Purpose. Nathan is now in his 10th year of The Frederick Douglass Speaking Tour; a living history performance which captures completely the physical and spiritual essence of the former slave, writer, orator and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. This living history series has been seen nationally and internationally and is a feature of the Chautauqua Institute. Nathan has film credits with the National Park Service and Alabama Public Television. His rendition of the speech “Frederick Douglass Honors the Unknown Loyal Dead” was nominated for “Best Short Film” at the 2022 I WILL TELL INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL. A short list of Nathan’s affiliations include the Suffolk Arts League, the Poetry Society of Virginia, Young Audiences of Virginia, 1st Amendment / 1st Vote, and Virginians for Reconciliation and the Association of African American Museums.
-
The world a held breath
a sea withdrawing before
a great bay wave
an August marsh brining
still air mud-flat stink
trees waiting on the gust
the lifted-foot fox in twilight
birdsong-silence under black cloud
balance not tipped but
waiting to tip
dry hiss of breeze
through marsh grass
warning in water-rush
frogs’ buzzing from vernal pools
an untuned radio we hear but
do not listen
listenShared with permission from the author.
Jocelyn Heath is an Associate Professor in English at Norfolk State University. Her first poetry collection, In the Cosmic Fugue, came out in November 2022 from Kelsay Books. Other creative writing has also appeared in The Atlantic, Crab Orchard Review, Poet Lore, Sinister Wisdom, Flyway,and Fourth River. Her book reviews have appeared at Lambda Literary, Entropy, The Lit Pub, and elsewhere. She is an Assistant Editor for Smartish Pace.
-
a man on the street yells to me—”it’s going
to be a blue new year.” at every corner, I watch
water transform. it churns in patterns
of algae and salt. a girl walks away
in five different directions.
now near the ocean, I feel
swallowed up. adrift in channels—branches
of a tree. here, there is something
worth noticing. parallel
lines leading to parched mouths.
I feel much older than I am. from my apartment,
I cannot see the water, but it hangs in the air.
grassy, saccharine wetness.
but I can see the tops of the boats.
the shipyard cranes—they spread apart the sky.Shared with permission from the author.
Sara Ryan is the author of I Thought There Would Be More Wolves (University of Alaska Press), as well as the chapbooks Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned (Porkbelly Press) and Excellent Evidence of Human Activity (The Cupboard Pamphlet). In 2018, she won Grist’s Pro Forma Contest and Cutbank’s Big Sky, Small Prose Contest. Her work has been published in or is forthcoming from Brevity, Kenyon Review, Diode, Thrush Poetry Journal, and others. She is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Virginia Wesleyan University.
-
Spiraling
downward
to take a peek,
aiming
my beautiful
beak at this tiny
sliver of earth,
sniffing creation
before climbing
toward night
sky.
Beneath
listening stars,
I allow this urban
tale to fill lungs
and weave through
dimly-lit trees,
like tender
shadows,
whispering sweet
noise.
To be alive
in this place
(this reality)
is to allow
this bright
dragon to carry
me on her
beautiful
back
around this
section of the
Trail.Shared with permission from the author.
Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton is an award-winning performance poet, educator, and recording artist. He is the author of 30 books and more than 170 spoken word albums, Eps, singles, and digital downloads. Lofton teaches literature at Chesapeake Bay Academy and Composition at Norfolk State University
-
Yesterday, it rained harder here
than I have ever seen in my life.
The water coursed around our home:
a raging river.
The gutters gave up the ghost,
and the plants couldn’t keep up
with the downpour of expectations.
Today, the water subsided,
as is the natural ebb and flow of things,
and our son was born.
All 7 pounds, two ounces of him.
Heart pumping fiercely.
Lungs filled with fluid.
We had a few moments to take in his beauty
before he was whisked away to the NICU
to make his first foray into the world.
Alone.
Our hearts breaking a little more
with each revolution of the incubator wheels.
Now,
there is a metaphorical
and physical
river
between us and our babies.
One sleeps on the other side of the James River.
One sleeps hallways and doorways and machines away.
Both are trying their very best to acquiesce
to their new life above water.
I can’t hold either of them
as much as I long to help them
adjust to this ebb and flow…
Welcoming a new sibling when you’re still a baby yourself.
Figuring out how to live and breathe in the world
with all its bright lights and harsh sounds.
There is only so much I can do.
Life makes us navigate some things on our own.
As their parents,
all we can do is float alongside themwith love.
We are boats
bobbing along on the tide.
Currents of love drawing us closer
and closer
to when we can finally anchor
and all rise with the tide
to this new dimension together.
The ebb and flow.
The holding on and letting go.
The parenting lessons,
the human lessons,
the love lessons
never cease.Shared with permission of the author.
Sarah Arteaga is a mother, a wife, a teacher, a student, a lover of nature and a person learning
more every day about what it means to live fully and freely. She has two little ones and a
wonderful husband, all of whom she loves fiercely. She taught English Language Development
to English Learners for 11 years before transitioning to being at home with her children. Sarah
continues to teach yoga online and in the local community. She also leads a run/walk group
called “Flight Club” that meets at Bird Girl Bottle Shop in Hilton Village. Everybody and every
body is welcome to join her for whatever moves them! You can learn more about Sarah and her
offerings at her website: www.stretchmarkheart.com
Dahlgren Trail Class of 2023
-
a soft grace note falls
deep within this well of dark
where music echoes
arias and dirges blend
as hope unfolds her feathers
Shared with permission of the author.
Elizabeth Spencer Spragins is a fiber artist, writer and poet who taught in North Carolina community colleges for more than a decade before returning to her home state of Virginia. Her work has appeared in more than 80 journals and anthologies in 11 countries. She is the author of three original poetry collections: Waltzing with Water and With No Bridle for the Breeze (Shanti Arts Publishing) and The Language of Bones (Kelsay Books). Learn more on her website.
-
Wall walking edges,
corners of portico bricks,
lookout on ledges,
performing wry tricks,
our upside-down acrobats
shinnying down trunks.
Forest habitats
furnish foraging for chunks
of tree nuts, acorns,
wedged in, hacked open.
Nasal calls—staccato horns—
enchant mates chosen,
fated cavity nesters,
woodpecker hole subletters.
Shared with permission of the author.
Cathy Hailey teaches as an adjunct lecturer in Johns Hopkins University’s online MA in Teaching Writing program and previously taught high school English and Creative Writing in Prince William County, Virginia. She is Northern Region vice President of The Poetry Society of Virginia and organizes In the Company of Laureates, a biennial reading of poets laureate held in PWC. Her writing has been published in The New Verse News, Poetry Virginia, Written in Arlington, Stay Salty: Life in the Garden State (Vol 2), Poetry for Ukraine (THE POET), Family (THE POET), and NoVA Bards, Poems are forthcoming in The Poetry Society of Virginia Centennial Anthology.
-
My summer stroll by fields of ripening corn
winds through tall grasses topped with ginger hairs
like narrow bottle-cleaning brushes.
I run my fingers through the rustlings but feel,
not stiff, tickling bristles, but yielding bodies—
soft pupae.
Fingertips tell me I’m pulpating squishy flesh, but yet,
how nature deceives my eye disguising insects
as spindly vegetation!
Back home, a website image unmasks a caterpillar pupa,
the yellow woolly bear, a huggable teddy,
and squashed when sat upon.
Searching, I come across spilosoma virginica,
a solid official name, latinized as if for Roman lictors,
dignifying caterpillars and teddy bears.
I prowl the trail again and detect one yellow woolly bear
whose wriggling appetite has made him far fatter than
his grassy camouflage can conceal.
Tomorrow, his miracle. Innocent metamorphosis—
a tiger moth, shapely wings pure, translucent, white,
. . . and briefly lovely.
Shared with permission by the author.
For fourteen years Linda Ankrah-Dove has lived in Harrisonburg in the central Shenandoah Valley after a lifetime working and living internationally. Her recent work focuses mainly on ecology, the nature of the cosmos and poverty issues. For light relief, she enjoys writing about the whimsical and absurd. Her early poetry from 2007 features in Borrowed Glint of Jade, St Brigid Press, 2019. She has featured in various journals and magazines on line and in print. Recent publications include The Virginia Literary Review, Spiritual Direction International, Hunger-X, Months To Years, Quilted Poems, Written in Arlington and Artemis, the last three all publications birthed by PSV poets. She is currently downsizing her home and this is somewhat delaying her submissions and her preparation of of a second book (or some chapbooks). These will include many of the poems she has composed since Linda gained her MFA during the Covid years.
-
Deep and quiet calm
Drawing toward September
A moment August rich
With final ripening
Just before the firm
Yet gentle pluck from stem
Fawns forage between trees grown dry
Even as leaves glisten
Wet-like in keening clarity
Of late summer light
Then scatter sharp
As a young buck steps from trees
Turning to me an onyx stare
A different path this time
And the fawns are running
And the fawns are running
And the fawns are running
Like a cloud
I am disappearing at the edges
Changing shape with the wind
There is no time for turning back
Nor onward step that does not grieve
And my eyes open to you at last
Like yellow daisies to the sun
Shared with permission by the author.
Steve Bucher lives and writes poetry in the Virginia Piedmont. He is an active member of the Poetry Society of Virginia. His first collection of poetry, We Stay a Brief Telling, was recently published by Propertius Press. His poetry also appears in the Blue Heron Review, the Journal of Inventive Literature, Glass: Facets of Poetry, the California Quarterly, the Way to My Heart anthology, the deLuge Journal, Artemis, Nova Bards, and the Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine.
-
Abandon attempts at wayfinding
feel
regard
what erupts from nurse logs
fallen on layers of forest
among fern fronds
what awakens the sleeping beauty
of tangled old growth
how the air spirals and babbles an invitation to a clearing
emerging now
between giants in the drizzle
broken branches and twigs levitate
twist themselves into
a passage
beyond.
Abandon attempts at hour-counting
follow
the viridescent nimbus emanating
from corridors of moss
the thicket’s hum
expect no geniality
from the cedars
their secrets
will stay secret
in knotted and gnarled trunks
the wind
dissolves questions
as ripples of the present
merge
into everywhen
arrive again
repossessed
at the threshold.
Shared with permission of the author.
Catherine Fletcher is a writer based in Norfolk, Virginia. Recent work has appeared in The Broadkill Review, The Inflectionist Review, New World Writing, Kissing Dynamite, and the concert series Concept Lab. She is a Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellow (2022) and a Creature Conserve Mentee (2022-23). She has received fellowships from Arizona State
University, Queens Council on the Arts, Brooklyn Arts Council, and others. Learn more on her Instagram account. -
Sometimes she started on the northern edge, and worked her way
south along the shoreline. Sometimes she flew across the center
point from different vantages, over and over, drawing an invisible
and immense asterisk in the air. Always, she fretted.
The southern part, where the reeds grew thickest, looked like it
might be drying out. The muskrats had burrowed into the western
shore, just a little to one side of the aging dock which had always
been there. To the north, the ducks were distraught—a duckling
had gone missing in the night. Snappers, probably, the crane
would mourn.
Alma Almanac (Barrow Street, 2017). Shared with permission by the author.
Sarah Ann Winn’s first book, Alma Almanac won the Barrow Street Book Prize, judged by Elaine Equi. She is also the author of five chapbooks, most recently, Ever After the End Matter (Porkbelly Press). Her writing can be found in Five Points, Kenyon Review, Massachusetts Review, Nashville Review, Smartish Pace, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of fellowships and residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Inner Loop’s Arcadia Residency, and at the Madeleine Island School for the Arts. In 2015, she founded Poet Camp, a roving residency and online community for writers. Last year, she was awarded the MISA Excellence in Teaching Fellowship by the Loft Literary Center. She currently teaches workshops online at Poet Camp, the Loft, and the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
-
Trickling secrets sneak
through leaks in the dam-
A cross-hatched construction
Of hazel alder and pond muck.
From land,
Water.
Steam curls like incense smoke
From a vaulted, vented roof.
Panicked bubbles squirm under ice-
trapped dreams of castorid ancestors.
From darkness,
Light.
The wise, old beaver slumbers
On carpets of feathery moss
Smelling of hope and damp earth
In her lodge of branches and bones.
From death,
Life.
Shared with permission of the author.
Alison Zak is the Founder & Executive Director of the Human-Beaver Coexistence Fund. She studied human-wildlife conflict in graduate school, then worked for six years in environmental education and outreach before founding HBCF. She is particularly intrigued, inspired, and challenged by human-beaver coexistence work, because few other animals have such an impact on the world around them. Alison jokes that beavers filled the monkey-sized hole in her heart as she transitioned away from primatological research on endangered, crop-feeding macaques. She now enjoys working with human primates and semi-aquatic rodents alike! Alison holds a BA (University of South Florida) and MA (San Diego State University) in Anthropology. Alison is the author of Wild Asana: Animals, Yoga, and Connecting Our Practice to the Natural Word.