Natural Life: A Poetic Field Guide

To read the poems in Stanley Kusunoki’s collection Natural Life is like wandering through different gardens with a wise teacher, who shares experiences and reflections in a delightful way. Gardening, whether applied to plants or young minds, is a recurring theme as, page by page, his poems till the wonders of the natural world and tell of memorials, teaching, our damaged planet, and travel. Along the way, we encounter an ornery hibiscus and a Saw-whet owl that travels to the city in a cut Christmas tree. Kusunoki marvels at the “Cosmic wonder/the moon exactly the right size/to blot out the disc of the sun,” and the wonder he sees in his students. In his metaphorical poem, “Openings,” his students are magnolia buds and he is “Patient, cajoling/A gardener with hose/Feeding, then waiting/And slowly, the petals unfold.” Fierce anger ignites a poem in which “…small minds and gorged egos” will bring about “The first generation to see the possibility/it might not see another generation following.”