Peter Newton
Lineage
Ammons, Dickinson, Dunn
with his eskimos and all their words for snow.
Eliot, Frost, Forché
with her prisoner’s ears strewn like peach halves.
Hall, Harrison, Hayden
who had a father like mine, he loved.
Justice, Issa, Kooser
and his one strand of horsehair sparrow-carried
across the meadow.
Kunitz who lived the longest
tending his garden as well as his words.
Larkin, Levy, Parker, Rilke,
oh yeah, and Richard Hugo who still drops a line.
Stafford, Thomas and Wislawa Szymborska
whose name alone— a poem I admire.
Wilde, Williams, Yeats,
of course, because and why not.
Our widening gyre.
But it’s Ammons
I return to whenever I feel alone
and need to ride on the back of a bumblebee.
How else to fly between the raindrops home?
caretaking one of their own ants
About the Author
Peter Newton is the author of several books in the Japanese short form traditions of haiku, haibun, and tan renga. His newest book of haiku, Glide Path (Red Moon Press, 2022), won second place in the 2023 Haiku Society of America Merit Book Awards. His most recent collection of haibun is Part-Time Gods (Snapshot Press, 2022).