Poem in a Pasture by Anne Hopkinson

October 2, 2023
Poem title: Poem in a Pasture Poet name: Anne Hopkinson Poem: This is the poem: Clouds graze the sky. Below, sheep drift gentle over fields, soft mirrors. Warm, white snow. She sprays the poem on a flock of sheep, one word each on their woolly rumps, and sets them free on a hillside to roam the field tuft to tuft, finding the juiciest tussocks, drawn to dandelions and buttercups along the path. Sky munches her way beside the, and over follows snow. Fleecy diction dots the hill, forming and reforming in ephemeral phrases determined by the flock, by the abundance of fresh green grass. Ruminants range in free verse. Soft, mirror, and fields find shade under a rowan tree, while below and gentle drink at a puddle. How easily they spread and gather: no writer’s block, no inner critic to stifle a human hand. Fifteen breeding ewes embody a poem on a meadow. Like poets they revise – white beside clouds – no, too cliché. Now white grazes with drift. End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Anne Hopkinson Anne Hopkinson is President of Planet Earth Poetry, a reading series of 27 years in Victoria. Her work appears in chapbooks, anthologies and journals. She won the Canadian Stories Poetry Prize in 2019, the Emily Carr Poetry Contest in 2021. Recent works are found in The New Quarterly # 164, The Antigonish Review #209, and the May 2023 contest runner-up in Arc Poetry.