God or Nature
‘Where is the spirit there?’
1. Spinozists
Since you asked me I’ve been thinking
how according to Spinoza
even those entangled branches
self-bereft of leaves for winter
are the same stuff, same life force
as lets stones stand their ground
or cuts swans’ wakes through duckweed …
and how protective of their young
are those swans in close formation
taking test flights up our lake
to stretch their cygnets’ wings
as if justifying my fond assertion,
a mystic’s, but without beliefs,
except, as you see, in the presences of things.
2. Sustenance
From your sickroom, winter trees
hoist three black crows into greyness.
A fourth one’s cawing, circling
above those knotted boughs.
Its calls re-echo through the mist …
But then round carpark perimeter fence
a wild boar mother with her young
emerges out of undergrowth,
and their being in these suburbs has a sense
even if brought together here
by pure coincidence.
Peter Robinson is Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Reading and poetry editor for Two Rivers Press. His latest collection of poetry is Retrieved Attachments, which came out in February 2023.