When Writing Poetry in the French Countryside
Missé, France
When writing poetry in the French countryside,
remember to go out for a walk if you’re visiting
in the middle of June. The sunflowers
at the neighboring farm won’t have bloomed yet,
though their stiff, bristly bodies will stand
as tall as you. There will be hundreds of them,
if not thousands—an army of green patience,
a summer solstice sea that will burst open
into saffron-stained stars in a few weeks’ time.
Remember to stop and stare at this field
longer than you did when you watched
the cows sleeping in the shade across the road,
longer than when you roamed your host’s garden
and found grapevines scaling trellises
and trees bearing infant pears and apples,
longer than when you bit into that fresh croissant
during breakfast and tried counting its flaky layers.
Don’t be surprised if you ask yourself
whether you ever counted how many disk florets
freckle the face of a sunflower,
or whether you fathomed how many seeds
this whole battalion in front of you could birth,
or whether you could write enough poems
to rival their profusion—
And what if you could? Once you return
to the room you’re renting, your head will be
brimming with more words, new lines, lingering
amazement blooming out of memory’s soil.
Will it all form a sonnet? A villanelle? Free verse
as wild as ivy? You won’t know until that moment.
How extraordinary is it, this ekphrastic life
that you share with those myriad black seeds,
which will ripen come early September?
In the Laboratory
The way the axolotl’s front-right limb
resprouts as his wound heals—
this is why the biologist monitors his health
and observes how he swims
in the makeshift pool,
why she measures the latest millimeters
of his skin-and-bone shoot
and adjusts the microscope’s focus
to magnify her view of the cells in each specimen.
The thrill of new growth gives her goosebumps.
She hopes she’s another step closer
to the answer, to some sacred knowledge
only certain species on Earth embody.
She allows herself to consider other angles—
the possibility of the human spine,
fingers, heart, or lung
regenerating.
She imagines
the surgeons who will apply her research at hospitals,
the doctors who will recommend this restoration,
the patients who will walk again, write again,
speak again, even mend their own organs.
Months from now, the article she will write
will not press for more cleanup work
in Mexico City’s wetlands, the axolotl’s home waters;
or state that fewer than one hundred
of these walking fish swim wild
yet tens of thousands live in aquariums worldwide;
or question whether creating T-shirts and TikTok videos
advocates for their salvation or their cuteness.
But it will describe how she cut away
the small adult amphibian’s limb
more carefully than a ripe mango from its pit,
and how, after five amputations,
the axolotl’s ability to recreate this extremity
slows down.
The biologist
does not know this final fact as of today.
Instead, she examines the axolotl’s rear-left leg,
fully regrown after fifty days.
She’s certain the front-right limb will produce
the same results: no scarring,
only the second life of a leg that,
suddenly, wasn’t there weeks ago.
Then she catches a glimpse of his mouth
as it opens—
and it unsettles her,
how the muscles in his jaws
allow him to offer
such a knowing, perpetual smile.
Sara Letourneau is the author of Wild Gardens (Kelsay Books, 2024); the book editor and writing coach at Heart of the Story Editorial & Coaching Services; and the co-editor of the Pour Me a Poem anthology. Her poetry has won the Beals Prize for Poetry and the Blue Institute’s 2020 Words on Water contest. Her most recent work can be found in The Arts Fuse, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Gyroscope Review, Nixes Mate Review, Silver Birch Press, and Third Wednesday Magazine. Visit Sara online at https://heartofthestoryeditorial.com/, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/heartofthestoryeditorial/, on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/sara_heartofthestory/, and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sara-letourneau/.
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