Ruth Stone

This morning we explore the poems of award-winning American poet Ruth Stone (June 8, 1915 – November 19, 2011).

Stone’s second marriage was in 1944 to professor and poet Walter Stone with whom she had two daughters. Walter Stone committed suicide in 1959; this tragedy shaped the path of Ruth Stone's life, as she sought ways to support herself and her daughters by teaching poetry at universities across the United States.

Her work is distinguished by its tendency to draw imagery and language from the natural sciences. Stone's verse was published widely in periodicals, and she was the author of thirteen books of poetry.

Currents

Something about a flock of birds toward evening.
The weather report sleet, snow.
The hot males riding ahead,
the swamp ridged in last year’s cattails.
Ego, vanity, the male strut.
Oh, that burr and sweetest whistle,
their hearts pumped with thrush steroids.
In another week, perhaps a quick melt
and we’ll hear them clinging to the old stalks,
staking out their claims
while from the south
the slow shadow of the migrating females
like Cleopatra’s barge,
the oars dipping,
the fringed canopy
like clouds of sweet rain
rippling behind.
The eternal tribal ritual,
the dense flock, undulating
packet of the future –
great sperm bank of the galaxy,
the billions of the separate
that gathers itself under the one,
summer after summer.

--Ruth Stone