Elizabeth Bradfield: Writer & Naturalist

Elizabeth Bradfield: Writer & Naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield: Writer & Naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield: Writer & Naturalist
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      • Approaching Ice
      • Interpretive Work
      • Anthology Publications
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Elizabeth Bradfield: Writer & Naturalist

Elizabeth Bradfield: Writer & Naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield: Writer & Naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield: Writer & Naturalist
  • Home
  • Bio
  • Books
    • Books
    • SOFAR
    • Cascadia Field Guide
    • Broadsided Anthology
    • Theorem
    • Toward Antarctica
    • Once Removed
    • Approaching Ice
    • Interpretive Work
    • Anthology Publications
  • Exhibits
  • News/Events
  • Read
  • Contact

Poems from "Interpretive Work"

Multi-Use Area

Would the day on the hay flats—

sun slight through clouds, grasses

just starting again from last year’s 

grasses, geese and cranes bugling 

over the marsh—have been better 

without  the old tires, the gutted couch 

in a pullout, a moose slumped alongside, 

meat taken but the head still attached? 


I can close my eyes to the pop bottles,

booze bottles, and orange skeet shells 

in the parking lot, along the river.  Walk

past them.  I can pretend my own steps 

through the marsh convey a different 

presence.  But I can’t close my ears.  

There, a white-fronted goose, there 

a pintail, willow branches cracking


underfoot, F-14s from the base.  And there, again,

the shotgun blast and whoop which I can’t

edit out, which I probably shouldn’t.  

It stops when I walk into view.  I stop

and stare across the flats through my 

binoculars, thinking asshole.  And of course 

someone’s staring back at me 

over a truck bed, thinking asshole. 

Back to Interpretive Work main page

Most of the poems in Interpretive Work were published before content was widely available online.  

I wanted to make some of them more accessible here.

Interpretive Work

www.ebradfield.com

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