Catherine Barnett is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers’ Award, the Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, and a Pushcart. Her book, Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced, won the 2003 Beatrice Hawley Award and was published in 2004 by Alice James Books. Barnett teaches at Barnard, the New School, and NYU. She also works as an independent editor and recently collaborated with the composer Richard Einhorn on the libretto for "The Origin," his multimedia oratorio about the life of Charles Darwin.

Purchase Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced here.

Gardener’s Song

When I plant the seeds,
I pack the dirt back hard.

When the garden comes up,
I spit on the greenest leaf.

When the tree bears fruit, black thread
through its branches frightens

the birds,
keeps them away.

Against hail: verbena.
Against lightning: laurel.

I’ve got nothing against the moon,
the moon stays in the sky,

nothing against the wind,
the wind can be kind,

but against your ardor,
O surrogate of the air—

I’ve got apples, a seckle pear,
the knife left gleaming here.

To cut them open
and peer inside them,

O moth, O seed, O spider, O worm—
As you do us.