New Poetry by Nate Metz

But What of Her Flames, Mr. Jeffers?

“To feel greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural beauty, is the sole business of poetry.” -Robinson Jeffers

And I understand why Jeffers believed this:

he sat there in that barefaced

Central California air, watching 

the huge sun gliding behind 

the Pacific’s ancient stillness,

and wrote his undeniable truth with what he saw. 

But Jeffers never met her. 

She is an ex-lover, who one May night

laid beside me by the cold bay, 

and with a blade of sincerity in her voice, 

explained to me that all she wanted

was to be beautiful the same way a 

Northern Oak is beautiful

after it had been pitilessly 

consumed to bone 

and ash by flames.

What would Jeffers say about that?

I don’t even know what I could say about that.

All I know is that it seems every bit like poetry’s

business, its purpose, to attempt 

to comprehend, just a little, the fleshy

essence of human captive within that; to explore 

not only the natural beauty but also her, and

her flames.

- © Nate Metz 2021

Nate Metz is an undergraduate writer attending Santa Clara University. He has previously been published in SCU’s The Owl (forthcoming) and won first prize in the Shipsey Poetry Prize. As an avid reader and writer of poetry, he sees poetry as a sincere means for self-expression and a critical way to explore our shared humanity.