Jamail Center for Legal Research
Tarlton Law Library

Revenge

At night, when the first flurries start,
ghosts of road-killed birds
fly out of nests hidden
in the drifts along the highway
to feed on snowflakes.

The light off their wings
and the hard, hissing calls
hypnotize tired drivers.
Some see them diving
in the vortex of the storm
just as the right wheels
leave the shoulder.
 

Late Winter Rain

On both sides of the road mist grows up
like beautiful mold
on the last scraps of snow.
The fields fill with meltwater
and blackbirds.
Geese occupy the lakes again.
Overhead, the weather blows
into March.
Today time travels west to east.
If I stay on this line
I can drive north forever,
dry, warm, and young.

December Fields

In the arctic light
the brown land is reduced
to essentials: fences,
bushes even, become monumental
and while the birches,
sycamores, hold a hint
of coming winter-across the fields
come grackles, ripening like black fruit
on all the starving branches.

An Erasure

I'm sorry I had to
forget you, repression
makes for martyrs
and immortality, now
like a drowned girl you rise
again in my thoughts. The wind circles
to get behind me-waiting on the beach,
I never know which tide
will turn you up-back
on my doorstep at last.

In Oshkosh

Bent over brooms,
Old women sweep back
the flood tide
of broken leaves.

The Soo Line's tracks
are buried
in dead corn stalks.

October rattles
through my dreams
on iron wheels.
 

High Summer

Slow sun pulls long days
over July.
The marsh holds its breath
and soaks in warm water.
Cattails surround the pond.
Ducks and turtles load on logs.
Songs slow in the woods.
Herons stand still as gray pilings
and fish come to graze
in their shadows.
Overhead, swallows mow down
a new crop of insects.

Iris Rising

She sleeps, quiet,
safe from mail, meetings
and memos,
in my mother's house
that settles around us
like many well-ordered years
put in their place at last.

The only light at the window
is from winter stars--
so bright they outline
the tall pines
at the end of the yard.

So few women
got places in the sky!
Cassiopeia, Andromeda,
Virgo swing into view.
No Iris--
but how could she turn
so slowly, except in sleep,
the only messages to see
sent light years ago.

Honey Creek

Finally we left the hot pasture,
slid under a barbed wire fence
and climbed through cool trees
to the bluff top.
Munching on sheep sorrel we watched a nuthatch
winding down a dead pine.
Through the branches a tiny tractor plowed a field
laid between the hills like a tablecloth.
We could hear the men shouting to each other
over the noise of their machines.

Hard Winter

Walking the lines I found a rabbit
caught in the slats of a snow fence--
wide-eyed, dead.
No marks.
Whatever it ran from
missed. Snow
gave it a decent burial.
Wind dug it up again.
I pulled the stiff body free,
still frozen in flight,
and lay it on the ground.
My gloves were covered with fur.
If there was a lesson
I left it there,
got back to my fire.

Clearwater

So still the reflection
of the full moon
on black ripples flickers
like a candle flame
in a gentle draft.
Chased off by bass boats
at twilight, the loons
return now, call the lake
their own.
The owls. The woods.

Rendezvous

In the room with the wood stove
we gather around the lost library table,
pass recent chardonnay, salmon
cooked with hot coals
and maple smoke, peaches
from family trees,
too much tobacco.

Again, we gently loosen the roots
and comb the branches of our family trees,
find fallen fruit, cut bark
and fresh new growth:
children and books out
of the nest, jobs that need us,
partners true at last.

We've stopped waiting
for big breaks, know how
the little ones add up
into six lives spent
mostly in art, sometimes
at our best.
 
Outside, fall colors peak
along with all the other signs
of closure, like old silver plate
we know too well
won't feed the guests
next year.

Inside, we divide trade goods--
new poems and addresses--
then rise at last
to face the road:
a bark basket of moss
and embers held close
under our coats
to start up the fire at home.

Hunting Agates at Two Harbors

This far north in September
the beaches are empty. A few crows
pick over the washed-up trash.
On the bay, one line of ducks
waits for ice. Under a log
bright clumps
of hibernating ladybugs.

These stones have had more time
to cool. They are the smoky orange
of the last sunlight
falling on a dying world.

Visions

The signs are all
for a hard winter. Don't
say you couldn't see them:
pines heavy with cones,
foraging squirrels everywhere.
How could you throw me out, thin
and hungry? The smell of snow
sharp on the air, summer ghosts
shaking in the trees.

Winter Solstice

No more than insects
stuck in amber, of fish
trapped in a shrinking pond,
we feel the stiffening, the first
ice crystals growing in our blood.

The pale sun rushes past
like a new nurse
in the terminal ward.
 
Weathervanes
always pointing north:
our brittle faces, turn, helplessly,
back into the wind.

Way To Go

At night it is a joy to drive
toward home not too far away.
The telephone poles are lost
in thought. There is room to breathe.
The farmyards sleep like dogs
under the barn lights.
Winnebago ghosts light slow fires
in cornhusk tepees.
A roadsign points the way to Eldorado
but no one turns. Two white tractor tires
mark a driveway outside Rosendale
then the blue reflectors grow and fade.
The lone radio station, demands a decision
for Jesus, but I am safe, buried
in the hearts of the saved.

Report From Iowa

Here the sky leans down and grinds the earth
like a wet sheet of sandpaper
pushed by an insane geologist
trying to erase his mistakes.
The people fight for cover:
so few trees or caves.
Turn over any leaf
and find whole families hiding there.
They secure themselves with private rituals:
festivals, dances, and hymns.
It is said that ancestor worship is still practiced.
Some men have been seen touching
and speaking to dirt
like defeated football coaches,
imagining ancient games,
trying to pick the winning side.

North Country

Out in the dark water
feeding trout ripple the lake
like rain. Forgotten logs
split and bleach like bones
between the rocks. Far away,
a diesel loco moans--
like a man who knows his work
is never done.

Storm Over Woodstown
 
When the clouds hurry
toward some destination,
and the insects ring out
worriedly, the farm men
sit up on their porches
to keep the lightning company
and hear the big drops
rattle through the corn.

November

Perfect gray day
leaves dead or dull green.
Today I go where I want,
fit in,
push through the tall weeds in my old coat
not hurting a thing.
Most birds long gone--
mosquitoes frozen out.
Down the creek, one muskrat
hunts for food under a fallen box elder.
I stand on the bank
content but lonely,
no friend along, no way
to celebrate the good news.

December

A manta ray cloud
swims in through the north.
Its cape covers the last light
gently, like a black priest
blessing winter.

Warren Woessner was born in 1944 at New Brunswick, New Jersey and grew up in a farm town in southern New Jersey. His father was a chemist. Woessner received his A.B. degree in 1966 from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1971 from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Before taking up the practice of law he was a Senior Research Scientist (1972-1978) with Miles Laboratories in Madison, Wisconsin. He is a founding partner of Schwegman, Lundberg, Woessner & Kluth P.A. (SLWK), a Minneapolis-based law firm specializing in intellectual property law. The firm has more than 50 attorneys and represents a number of Fortune 500 companies and major universities. His practice focuses on chemical, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, vaccines, medical treatments, and agricultural and food chemistry. Woessner has published widely on legal topics and is the chair of the Biotechnology Committee of the American Intellectual Property Law Association.
In 1968, Woessner with James Bertolino, founded Abraxas, an independent small press and poetry journal. Woessner was also a founder of WORT-FM (Madison, Wisconsin) and hosted for some years the station's poetry and fiction program, "Visitors from Inner Space." Woessner has had a long-standing fascination with birds and has traveled frequently to Alaska to locate and identify that state's bird species.
Woessner's poetry is widely anthologized and he received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wisconsin Arts Board. He was a Loft-McKnight Fellow in 1985 and won the Minnesota Voices Competition sponsored by New Rivers Press in 1986. Woessner's published collections of poetry include: The Forest and the Trees: Poems (Quixote Press, 1968); The Rivers Return (Gunrunner Press, 1969); Inroads: Poems (Modine Gunch Press, 1970); Cross-Country: Poems (Quest Publications, 1972); Landing (Ithaca House, 1973); Lost Highway (Texas City, Texas: College of the Mainland, 1977); No Hiding Place (Spoon River Poetry Press, 1979); Storm Lines: A Collection of Poems (New Rivers Press, 1987); Clear to Chukchi: Poems from Alaska (Poetry Harbor, 1995); Iris Rising (BkMk Press, 1998). His most recent publication is Chemistry, A Poem (Pudding House Publications, 2002).
The poems which appear here are drawn from Woessner's several poetry collections: The Forest and the Trees (Quixote Press, 1968), Landing (Ithaca House, 1973), Lost Highway (A Poetry Texas Book, 1977), No Hiding Place (Spoon River Poetry Press, 1979), Storm Lines: A Collection of Poems (New Rivers Press, 1987), Clear to Chukchi: Poems from Alaska (Poetry Harbor, 1995), Iris Rising (BkMk Press of UMKC, 1998). The poems republished here were first published as follows: "Revenge" (Great Circumpolar Bear Cult); "Late Winter Rain" (Chowder Review); "December Fields" (Poetry Review (Tampa)); "An Erasure" (Upriver); "In Osh Kosh" (Quixote); "High Summer" (Lake Street Review); "Iris Rising" (Minnesota Monthly); "Honey Creek" (Chowder Review); "Hard Winter" (Cutbank); "Clearwater" (Swamp Water); "Rendezvous" (The Heartlands Today); "Hunting Agates at Two Harbors" (Poetry Now); "Visions" (Chowder Review); "Winter Solstice" (Kumquat); "Way To Go" (Abraxas); "Report from Iowa" (South Dakota Review); "North Country" (Great Lakes Review); "Storm Over Woodstown" (Foxfire); "November" (Changes).