Brian Beard’s poem “Earth to Sky” appears in the most recent issue of The Red Rock Review. Usually our “Writer in the Limelight” series features the writers who teach with WITS. This is different. Brian Beard is not a writer teaching for WITS but a teacher (at Bellaire High School in Houston) who hosted a WITS writer in his classroom.

Brian explains the genesis of his poem this way: I wrote this poem using the prompt [WITS Writer] Jacob White gave my class last year. The prompt was essentially: “Write a letter from one natural element to another.” I am tickled that the WITS collaboration, which my students got so much out of, was inspiring and helpful to me as well. Even though I don’t have a WITS writer in my class this year, I continue to use creative writing techniques I picked up with Jacob over the year and Cecily [another WITS writer] over the summer.

Here is Brian’s published poem:

Earth to Sky

Your indifferent breeze,
your self-serving bees,
your distant sun:

still I would give you this bouquet
from my dirty, grassy paws.

From under winter’s death shroud,
each unborn petal longs to muzzle against
your unholdable face.

by Brian Beard