Firekeeper
New and Selected Poems by Pattiann Rogers
(This book can be ordered from Milkweed at 1-800-520-6455 or from Amazon Books.)
The Hummingbird: A Seduction 
If I were a female hummingbird perched still
And quiet on an upper myrtle branch
In the spring afternoon and if you were a male
Alone in the whole heavens before me, having parted
Yourself, for me, from cedar top and honeysuckle stem
And earth down, your body hovering in midair
Far away from jewelweed, thistle, and bee balm;
And if I watched how you fell, plummeting before me,
And how you rose again and fell, with such mastery
That I believed for a moment you were the sky
And the red-marked bird diving inside your circumference
Was just the physical revelation of the light's
Most perfect desire;
And if I saw your sweeping and sucking
Performance of swirling egg and semen in the air,
The weaving, twisting vision of red petal
And nectar and soaring rump, the rush of your wing
In its grand confusion of arcing and splitting
Created completely out of nothing just for me,
Then when you came down to me, I would call you
My own spinning bloom of ruby sage, my funnelling
Storm of sunlit sperm and pollen, my only breathless
Piece of scarlet sky, and I would bless the base
Of each of your feathers and touch the tine
Of string muscles binding your wings and taste
The odor of your glistening oils and hunt
The honey in your crimson flare
And I would take you and take you and take you
Deep into any kind of nest you ever wanted. --Pattiann Rogers
Small Presses Expert Editor's Recommended Book, 05/01/97:
Sometimes you need to get away from asphalt and smog and take a walk in the woods. Rogers has long been a favorite poet of mine because she not only facilitates an escape into nature, she authorizes it. In this collection of her newer and her best poetry, we metaphorically move throughout the places that nature has prepared for us as one of its own offspring. Take a walk on Rogers's path; it's just a little wild--and exceptionally peace-giving.
Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year:
New poems and poems selected from the poet's five previous books. A love song to the intricate variety and generous mystery of the universe, Rogers's poems incorporate the detail of a field guide and the reverence of a hymnal.
"If you don't read poetry, read Pattiann Rogers--and then you will."--Robert Michael Pyle
"If angels were to agree upon a language to describe creation, a tone of voice and a point of view that would adequately celebrate the divine, these would be the poems they would write. . . . If this is not poetry in service to humanity, I do not know what is."--Barry Lopez
Natalie Ornish Poetry Award
Finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
Table of Contents Hiring the Man Who Builds Fires for a Living In Order to Perceive For Stephen, Drawing Birds Suppose Your Father Was a Redbird The Rites of Passage Without Violence The Question of Affection Seduced by Ear Alone Achieving Perspective The Brain Creates Itself The Man Hidden Behind the Drapes Concepts and Their Bodies (The Boy in the Field Alone) The Determinations of the Scene Being of this State Supposition The Success of the Hunt The Significance of Location A Giant Has Swallowed the Earth Counting What the Cactus Contains Making a History On the Existence of the Soul Synthesizing the Word All the Elements of the Scene That Song The Fear of Falling Capturing the Scene The Pieces of Heaven Second Witness Her Delight Raising the Eyes That High Love Song The Hummingbird: A Seduction The Power of Toads The Possible Salvation of Continuous Motion A Daydream of Light The Definition of Time The Possible Suffering of a God During Creation The Possible Advantages of the Expendable Multitudes The Verification of Vulnerability: Bog Turtle Justification of the Horned Lizard Eulogy for a Hermit Crab Trinity The Creation of the Inaudible Transformation Intermediary Parlor Game on a Snowy Winter Night Finding the Tattooed Lady in the Garden Reaching the Audience Discovering Your Subject Being Accomplished Inside God's Eye Naked Boys on Naked Ponies A Seasonal Tradition The Mirror of Pierrot The Study of the Splinter Expert Locating the Source of Intention Gentlemen of Leisure The Pursuit as Solution The Love of Enchantment: Felicia Was Kissed in the Garden Last Night How the Whale Forgets the Love of Felicia The Myth: Raison d'Etre The Creation of Sin One in Three Sight and Sound The Next Story The Dead Never Fight Against Anything The Voice of the Precambrian Sea The Origin of Order The Answering of Prayers The Importance of the Whale in the Field of Iris For the Wren Trapped in a Cathedral The Grooming There Is a Way to Walk on Water Knot The Family Is All There Is Rolling Naked in the Morning Dew When at Night For Passions Denied: Pineywoods Lily When You Watch Us Sleeping The Objects of Immortality On Being Eaten Alive Before I Wake A Common Sight In Addition to Faith, Hope and Charity A Voice Speaks in Earnest, but Nobody Listens That's Why Geocentric Teaching a Sea Turtle Suddenly Given the Power of Language, I Begin by Saying: Life and Death: All the Lost Accordions and Concertinas Diving for Gold: The Bottom of the World Good Heavens Elinor Frost's Marble-topped Kneading Table Snow Thinking Distance and Depth By Death To Complete a Thought Under the Big Top The Year All the Clowns Were Executed Get on Board The Mad Linguist The Process The Greatest Grandeur Till My Teeth Rattle In My Time The Need to Adore Emissaries If Dying Means Becoming Pure Spirit The Laying-on of Hands Eating Death Berry Renaissance Apple Disciples Still Life Abroad Foreplay The Power of Sun Are Some Sins Hosannas? This Kind of Grace Fetal Bat: The Creation of the Void Infanticide Goddamn Theology The Natural Nature of Late Night Prayers Trial and Error God Alone Another Little God Life in an Expanding Universe Creating Transfiguration The Fancy of Free Will For Any Known Fact: Nude Walking Alone on a Beach in Moonlight The Image in a World of Flux The All-Encompassing