This poem explores the way nature provides for us through its free gifts and how we can reciprocate its care.
by Narya Rose Deckard
illustration by Lyudmila Tomova Clark

Narya Rose Deckard is the author of Wolfcraft, which won Broken Tribe’s MFA Graduate Award. She has poems in journals such as Dead Mule and Kakalak and the anthology Had I a Dove and has won the Susan Meyers Poetry Award. She teaches creative writing and English at Lenoir-Rhyne University. She lives in western North Carolina. “This poem, for me, expresses nature’s love language of giving gifts, no questions asked. She heals us, feeds us, on hot summer days she cools us — and she always wraps her gifts in beauty. The more I can express my love by attending to her gifts, the more I can give in return.”

Lyudmila Tomova Clark is an impressionist watercolor and en plain air artist who specializes in portraits, figures and landscapes. She works out her Cary, North Carolina home studio and her work has been selected by the National Watercolor Society and the statewide North Carolina Artists Exhibition.

This article originally appeared in the August 2026 issue of WALTER magazine.