(Photo courtesy of Legislative Support Services Photo Department)

The Office of Secretary of State was pleased to help welcome Washington’s new poet laureate, Seattle-based Elizabeth Austen, to the Capitol on Wednesday.

Austen, who is beginning a two-year term as the state’s designated teacher-performer-ambassador for poetry, was honored by a speaking role at the opening exercises of the state Senate, reading her poem “This Morning.”

This Morning

                                    “Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?”
                                    – Roethke

It’s time. It’s almost too late.
Did you see the magnolia light its pink fires?
You could be your own, unknown self.
No one is keeping it from you.

The magnolia lights its pink fires
daffodils shed papery sheaths.
No one is keeping you from it—
your church of window, pen and morning.

Daffodils undress, shed papery sheaths—
gestures invisible to the eye.
In the church of window, pen and morning
what unfolds at frequencies we can’t see?

Gestures invisible to naked eye
the garden opens, an untranslatable book
written at a frequency we can’t see.
Not a psalm, exactly, but a segue.

The garden opens, an untranslatable book.
You can be your own unknown self—
not a psalm, but a segue.
It’s time.

Originally published in Pontoon 7: an anthology of Washington State Poets

Austen has worked in theater and poetry, and once enjoyed a six-month trek in the Andes. She is a published poet and performer, works as literary programmer for KUOW public radio, and also works with Seattle Children’s Hospital.