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Blackberry Picking
These
sharp, honed razor stalks
sprouted
up and mixed with broom
coat
the scars of land disturbed.
Their
stalks reach up and cling to trees,
stretch
in tangled barbed islands,
a
refuge for quail and rabbit,
snakes
and mice.
I
wade into the thorny waters
to
pick those plump rich berries
just
a stretch away,
a
scratch away, a curled hand,
two
subtle fingers reaching up beneath a leaf,
the
juice of picked berries staining
them,
rich and red, purple in the shade.
The
canes move and grip my hat,
claw
at the cotton shoulders of my shirt.
I
pick with either hand,
held
in a cocoon of time,
lost
in picking,
Lost
in all the tangles of a life.
I
eat a few; the juice exploding on my tongue.
The
dogs, tired of chasing rabbits
sit
in the long dry grass beside me.
I
feed them berries
and
they, too, begin to pick from the lower stalks.
We
gather together,
the
hot sun of a blue sky and a breeze
much
a part of us
berries,
dogs and me.
Close to the Road
Close to the road
the forest hugs the ditch,
harbours secrets and sword ferns,
rotting stumps, step-moss draped,
equisetum tails, bunchberry,
maidenhair fern, and vanilla leaf.
The tarmac cooks;
the forest damp and moist
shelters cool and calm.
Once inside you’re lost,
your childhood bluebell found,
perfect in its simplicity,
the fawn along the curve of trail
behind the giant redwood,
or the snowshoe hare
silent and still beside your
teenage beating heart,
below the pine one summer afternoon.
And now later on in life
you stumble upon an old-growth
cedar stump, gaping gashes in its side,
where planks were driven
for logger’s feet, to cut higher up the trunk,
to slay its woody majesty,
where on its top, it nurses
another cedar now huge itself,
draping curved branches down into a cage
around its ancient soil.
You part the bars, now smooth and dry
like the curved ribs of a mythical beast
and stop!
Like flash of snake beneath your feet
or as the drum wings of a pheasant
startle you among the ferns
when the darkness of the forest
played tricks on you.
you stop!
A yearling black-tail rests for eternity
one round black hole in its shoulder,
eyes long gone,
hooves and fur and shape intact
as once it leaped and grazed.
You pause here
while all your universes spin
a chain around your heart.
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