Taking poetry outdoors offers all sorts of possibilities — and distractions. It could rain or a jackhammer might be jabbering nearby, the latter not unlikely on a sprouting campus like UC Davis. But the cold bright day of Nov. 12 felt — and sounded — just right for a Poetry in the Arboretum reading.

During that day’s lunch hour, poets Sandra Gilbert and Kel Munger, with the lyrical sounds of schoolkids playing in the distance, shared their works with about two dozen people on Wyatt Deck with redwoods towering all around, as if listening in.

Gilbert, a UC Davis distinguished professor emerita, read several food-oriented poems — after all, it was a lunchtime reading, she noted. From brussels sprouts to beets and artichokes, Gilbert rhapsodized about the various cultural understandings of edible material. She is currently writing a book on “literary eating,” called The Culinary Imagination.

For Gilbert, these poems now speak of the lightness and darkness of a different time in her life. “I wrote those poems in young and happy days, when I was a wife and mother and teacher at UC Davis.”

That all changed when Gilbert’s husband suddenly died — of this, she read in stark, jagged tones about her man lingering ghost-like in her mind for a long time.

Munger, who was a cop in Ames, Iowa, for 10 years and is now the book editor at the Sacramento News & Review and author of the poetry collection The Fragile Peace You Keep, read one of her works about a three-legged dog with a certain “hopping grace” and phantom pain — “if it hurts, it’s still yours.”

Munger also spoke of bittersweetness in leaving her law enforcement career at a time when she was falling in love — “It was what I wanted forever, until I wanted you.”

The Poetry in the Arb-oretum readings are sponsored by Poets and Writers Inc. Organizers plan more readings in the spring and fall of next year — check arboretum.ucdavis.edu for updates.