2 Poems by Byron Hoot

As Though They’re Mine

I try to wait without expectations.
Easier to do the older I’ve become,
the way life narrates my story,
the practice of wu wei I practice.
I go back to what Dad used to say,
“We’ll see.” I think it might have
been his favorite prayer.
Say the words as though they’re mine.


Trees and Me

The trees are in their posture of prayer,
their branches lifted towards the sky
waiting for a breeze or wind to carry
their supplications away.
I watch to see what they receive and it
is everything. I take this in, think I am
different, then remember them in spring
and summer and fall and winter. Cast
my own prayer, “I would be more like trees.”



Bionote

Byron Hoot was born and raised in Morgantown, West Virginia. He now lives in The WILDS of Pennsylvania. Still in Appalachia where the hills and valleys, streams and lakes, the people formed, and still form him, and gives what he writes about – the spirituality of being surrounded by Nature, of being and time, of being lost and found. He’s had poems in The Watershed Journal, Tobeco Literary Arts Journal, and on www.northsouthappal.com./appalachian literature.html. Tiny Seed, Route 1, Adelaide Press, Rune, Keystone: An Anthology of Pennsylvania Poets, published by Penn State University Press, and winner of Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge (2022) and in Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel Anthology. He is a co-founder of The Tamarack Writers (1974). You can find his poetry on Amazon.