Marjorie Buettner

The Fifth Season

Some say there are more than four seasons, transforming the turn of the year. And in those seasons, some say, they can smell time trembling on the bend of tomorrow. But if there were a fifth season, I would not count on time to carry us through tomorrow but on something else; something more: count on what the heart speaks before the mind remembers itself. Count on what the heart can hold after years of folding a life into the span the width of a hand, or what the heart remembers. Simple things that are not drawn or quartered by time but remain untouched, timeless, yet full of the luminous imprint of here and now and which cannot be duplicated, ever, always.

Dakota land
some kind of loneliness 
rising from the fields

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About the Author

Marjorie Buettner has published two books of poetry by Red Dragonfly Press: Some Measure of Existence (haibun), which won the Haiku Society of America book award, and Seeing it Now (haiku and tanka). Her most recent chapbook, Dakota Dreaming (2024), won the Poetry Plains and Prairies Award sponsored by North Dakota State University Press. She lives in Chisago City, Minnesota.

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