Poems By Beth Copeland | Award-winning American poet

Beth Copeland is an award-winning American poet whose work reflects her multicultural upbringing in Japan, India, and North Carolina. She is the author of several acclaimed collections, including Traveling Through Glass (1999), Blue Honey (2017), Selfie with Cherry (2022), Shibori Blue (2024), and I Ask the Mountain to Heal My Heart (2025). Her poetry blends Eastern and Western sensibilities, using nature—mountains, fog, deer, and forests—as metaphors for memory, solitude, and healing. A recipient of the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize and other honors, Copeland’s lyrical voice offers readers solace, beauty, and deep spiritual connection.Today we will read some of her poems.

Shavasana

Lying on the yoga mat in corpse pose,
I want to levitate above all suffering,
to return to a summer long ago when
I lay flat on my back in a turquoise pool
with eyes closed. The swim instructor
said, I’m letting go but you won’t sink.
When I opened my eyes, white clouds
billowed like the bleached sheets Mother
hung on the line to dry above fresh-mown
grass and clover or like a flock of sheep
grazing on a muscari-blue pasture of sky. 

Lately, I don’t know if there’s any hope left,
if there’s a lifeline reeling us back to shore
or only a frayed rope pulling us farther out
to sea. But as I deeply breathe, I become
a child again, eyes open to heaven, held
on the water’s shimmering surface, adrift
in that moment of wonder when we know
nothing is holding us up and we float.

 
Late November

Watching a dry leaf twirl
in the wind, its stem still
 
tethered to the tree, I think
of how stubborn I’ve been,
 
refusing to let go of what was
never intended for me,
 
not knowing something better
was waiting if I’d let myself lift
 
into the gale, that the courage
to fail is life’s greatest gift.
 
 
Eleven Lines In Search of a Perfect Rhyme
 
 
Is it accidental that bereft almost rhymes with death?  
 
Watching Canada geese rise in a V formation from the New River
at Grassy Creek, flying south to warmer waters, I think of how
 
sons and daughters grow up, how the nest—that like death
almost rhymes with bereft—empties with their flight.
 
How these words fly out of my mouth like startled birds.
 
How we dream of loved ones who are dead. How we forget
what happened in the dream, what we did, what we said.
 
How there are hundreds of ways to leave, not only the 50 ways
in Paul Simon’s song, and thousands of ways to grieve, bereft.
 
How you can be both the lover leaving and the lover left.

 
Green Heart on a Gravel Road

After the sudden storm, a fallen leaf  
          in stark contrast to broken rocks. 
 
All night the storm raged and my thoughts
          spiraled like smoke in the dark.
 
Now the hyacinths emerge from winter sleep,
          forsythia and daffodils trumpet
 
the sun’s good news, and wild violets break
          through flagstone to bloom.
 
We have to find a way to get beyond this,
          you wrote. So we can grow.
 
This morning’s leaf, this green letter unleashed
          on the wind, the rain, the world,
 
addressed to you, to us: Don’t give up!
 

Beloved

—for Paul
 
 
As the mountain sleeps beneath sheets of fog,
you’re here, unseen, dreaming
 
my dreams as I dream yours, as the river
shivers beneath its rippling
 
cottonmouth skin and hummingbirds whir
to saucers of syrup on iridescent wings,
 
as trees listen and speak in the language of leaves
and I seek your face in the clouds,
 
knowing it will be etched with sorrow when we meet
after wandering through forests of pine,
 
hemlock, and beech, not lost but following
maps of memory that will lead us to each other,
 
to the star in your hand that matches the scar in mine.

Beth Copeland

About Beth Copeland

• Multicultural upbringing: Beth Copeland spent her childhood in Japan, India, and North Carolina, a formative experience that infused her poetry with a rich blend of Eastern and Western sensibilities
• Academic and professional background: She has served as an English instructor at Methodist University in Fayetteville, North Carolina
• Literary recognition:
• Her debut full-length collection, Traveling Through Glass, won the Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Award in 1999
• Her collection Blue Honey (2017) received the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize
• She has published several more collections: Transcendental Telemarketer (2012), Selfie with Cherry (2022), Shibori Blue: Thirty-six Views of The Peak (2024), and I Ask the Mountain to Heal My Heart (2025)
• Publications & accolades: Her poems appear in prestigious journals such as Hunger Mountain, The Ledge, Rhino, and The Emily Dickinson Anthology. She has received awards from bodies like Arts & Letters, Atlanta Review, North American Review, the North Carolina Poetry Society, and Peregrine, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize

Her Poetry: Themes & Style (in English)

Beth Copeland’s poems resonate deeply with nature, place, memory, and the healing power of landscape, especially the mountains she calls home. Here are some central themes and stylistic notes:

1. The Mountain as Sanctuary

In I Ask the Mountain to Heal My Heart, the mountain becomes a powerful symbol of stability, solace, and spiritual anchoring. She writes of the mountain as “a point of reference / to keep us from becoming lost,” a reminder that “we are not lost—we are exactly where we are”

2. Solitude and Healing

This collection is often described as a meditative journey, blending poems about the mountain, clouds, fog, deer, and other natural elements surrounding her North Carolina home. It holds space for memory, longing, identity, and healing

3. Nature and Emotional Landscape

In journals like Verse & Image, poems from I Ask the Mountain… capture intimate scenes of fog, deer, and webs—and transform them into metaphors for grief, hope, and connection:

“Fog erases the mountain and trees. / No, not an erasure but unseen.”
“My friends, there’s still so much love in this world even when you’re alone.”

4. Eastern-Western Cultural Fusion

Her multicultural background informs her poetic vision. Born in Japan and moved to the U.S.—she’s drawn to blending traditional Western forms (like sestinas and canzones) with Eastern imagery and sensibility, influenced by poets like Agha Shahid Ali

5. Daily Inspiration from Landscape

In interviews, Copeland describes how the daily view of “The Peak”, the highest mountain in Ashe County, North Carolina, inspires her creative process. She writes on her deck, walks while reflecting, and often composes in the early morning when her mind is most energized

Summary (in English)

Beth Copeland is a poet of place, drawing from her life across continents and cultures to create poems that are both psychic landscapes and spiritual roadmaps. Her latest collection, I Ask the Mountain to Heal My Heart (2025), offers heart-healing poems rooted in the counsel of mountains, fog, deer, and daily nature. Themes of memory, solitude, and the search for belonging weave through her work, reflecting a deep sense of reverence for the natural world and its capacity to heal and ground us.