Coming soon, from Spartan Press to bookshelves and your hands… Heron Spirit, a poetry collection that explores a lifelong relationship with nature.

Quench This Thirst

Give me a forest trail
beneath radiant amber leaves
that dance playfully in sunlight,
past stony outcrops that speak
of history embraced in layers of time
that seeps to form rivulets of life
that feed streams great and small.
Take me to the banks of those rivers
where the forest’s roots reach to the water.
Just as their thirst is quenched,
let mine be so, that I may know
the beauty of leaves, of water, and of sky.

“Ken Gierke’s new poetry collection, Heron Spirit, is a
conversation with the natural world. The poems take us
from playing in leaves to lines that paddle in unison with the
waves of metaphors, the lines that stretch into the endless
horizon of an endless river. Nature holds bold, tall titans,
sentinel eagles, and a graceful heron that transforms into the
Maid of the Mist. Gierke’s poems observe and reflect “in
true silence”. Maneuvering in the waters teaches us how to
solve problems and gain new perspectives. The poems fill the
silence not just between each paddle but between bird calls.
That is, the poems breathe with the flow of the river and bird
songs. Through stunning imagery and use of meter, Gierke
shows us that the forces of nature are the true constant for
our future generations and “beckon us all” to enter the sacred
realm of the heron spirit.”

-Barbara Harris Leonhard, Author, Three-Penny
Memories: A Poetic Memoir (EIF-Experiments
in Fiction, 2022)

Ken G.

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