Foot of the Lake Poetry Collective

Sandra Ahrens has published poems in Paper Street, cant, A Cup of Poems and a Side of Prose, and Phoebe: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Feminist Scholarship. Her work has been nominated for the AWP Intro Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship, and for a Pushcart Prize. Sandra received her M.A. in English from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee in their Creative Writing Program. She has facilitated poetry workshops in a variety of community settings. Sandra lives in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

The Lesser Fritillary, the Angelica

I want it both ways —
to wander in sun-dreamed trance through nameless glory,
and to take in a presence, calling it by name.
It’s true that no map is the territory it claims to tell.
Lovers of names risk missing the thing itself
to caress it’s invented title. Gazing into deep pools
we encounter ourselves first and last.
Names serve as binding, the tendril stitch
of attachment to this blazing spot in June,
marked with remarkable beings, named
not as they are, but describing our path
towards each spirit: a butterfly called
the fritillary, the plant named angelica.

Published in Paper Street Press, Spring 2004

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