Poem - In A Single Afternoon by Daniella Pateman

In A Single Afternoon

by Daniella Pateman

I heard the bones of birds moving
in the raspberry bushes. No longer were they
winged choirs or earth angels, but small bodies
with veins and marrow and muscles
and stomachs swelling with the blood
and stretching with the skin of ripe berries.

I knelt in the center of the patch
half sinking- half rising and all around me
throats like apertures opening for the red light.
It was not an afternoon for communicating
with the gods, forewarning signs
of burning bushes or divination
but for children of a green humming earth.

All of us hid from the afternoon sun,
picking and eating and singing to ourselves.
The berries became so warm they passed
to liquid above us, an unexpected sun shower
that filled our pores.

Daniella Pateman’s first chapbook Drawing Blue Stones was published by Frog Hollow Press, which also regularly features her work on their website. She currently resides in Toronto.