On a wooded hill in San Raphael
not far from the house
was a small cave

where the earth was damp, the rock walls
cool and rough, and there were green scents
of moss and mint.

It was a wonder and a shelter
to look out from.
The ancestors of my young bones

would sit down quietly there
and gaze out of my eyes
into the leaves and branches

sifting the sunlight.
If someone spoke, it was a bird
or a voice too far off to make out the words.

–Greg Pape,
Animal Time (2011)
Accents Publishing

Greg Pape is the author of nine books, including Border Crossings, Black Branches, Storm Pattern (University of Pittsburgh Press), Sunflower Facing the Sun, winner of the Edwin Ford Piper Prize (University of Iowa Press), and American Flamingo, winner of a Crab Orchard Open Competition Award (Southern Illinois University Press). His poems have been published widely in such magazines and literary reviews as The Atlantic, Iowa Review, The New Yorker, Northwest Review, and Poetry. He has received the Discovery/The Nation Award, two National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowships, the Pushcart Prize, the Richard Hugo Memorial Poetry Award, and his poems have been featured on NPR and read by Garrison Keillor on The Writers’ Almanac. He teaches at the University of Montana, and in the Brief-residency MFA program at Spalding University. Greg served as Poet Laureate of Montana from 2007 to 2009.