Don’t worry, I have no big ideas. Just perpetual reverberation
of the black snake in the dewberry bramble. Girls sitting back to back in the field.
Fear as felt by the animal. Foam of sweat along the withers. Ferment has always been
a desirable smell. Fear as felt in the nostrils as the herd of deer run through, or when I imagine
myself as a lover. Arborescence, an inaccurate term. The Pawpaw wouldn’t fruit, as the grove emerged from the family rhizome. Often one buries the root flare.
Excited by the round sound of some birds. He wanted to espalier a rune for earth, which I found silly. Mankind who is evasiveness; superiority of the tree, which is rootedness and deepening.
In April, the goal was to feel prepared. It was hard to remember to fill in the little circles indicating how many glasses of water I’d consumed. If form is an extension, then pull up that chair
A cloth named Night Night carried until the third grade when she tells me not to, so attached that we
called it weening
The foals, isolated in the stall while the mares pace the field.
Not understanding then, the mare’s shriek. Discovered clay in a creek bed with the gelding Palomino. Making tunnels in the tall grass because that’s what fawns did who ween themselves without need of the stall.
That deer make a startling sound to a child, a blowing. That copperheads can still bite after death
by tractor blade, a blow. Though I think you’d have to aggravate it. The irritable poet.
In the season that the grasses are rolled into bales, they get caught up in the twine. A smallness in focus.
The bucket is red and contains a handful of blackberries, or more likely, dewberries. A retrospective
detail.
Some details emerge like the Coon Creek Tongue. Squat with the bramble to meet the eyes of a black snake, coiled and resting its head on its middle. The mares gave birth in the field at night. And there was
fear, a desire to observe the damp beds in the tall grass. A different kind of Revelation.
A little feed in your pocket to hold you over. The sandal consumed by the cartoon physics of localized quicksand.
Katherine Duckworth is a poet from Tennessee. She is the author of
Slow Violence (beautiful days), The Soda Can Forever (roseffern), and
Mexia (roseffern). You can find her most recent work in Mercury Firs
and Works & Days.