would have nothing whatsoever
to do with, you know — those interlopers.
It would have, I suppose,
a cold mountain stream in it,
a rock shifting in the current,
the too-loud splash of a trout.
It would have loose bark
ticking in the wind
& a saw-whet owl’s discrete
requests for clarification —
that kind of persistence.
It would have the hush
when the crickets suddenly stop
& your pulse makes such a racket
you’re sure it will give you away,
you whose knees
are incapable of bending,
whose feet grip as much of the ground
as they can still lay claim to.
It would cry, that poem,
possibly for joy.
It would hiss.
I live in an Appalachian hollow in the Juniata watershed of central Pennsylvania, and spend a great deal of time walking in the woods. Here’s a bio. All of my writing here is available for reuse and creative remix under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. For attribution in printed material, my name (Dave Bonta) will suffice, but for web use, please link back to the original. Contact me for permission to waive the “share alike” provision (e.g. for use in a conventionally copyrighted work).
A living poem, well done!
Am I Daphne hiding from Apollo?
Thanks, M-L!
Hadn’t thought of that, Bill. Definitely a parallel, though.
A cool thing about “you”: it can have two syllables, “ewe-oo”, the “oo” a faint echo of the “you”, but different, like an echo is different depending on the material it’s reflected from, in this case the enclosing syrinx of the lips. “You” said in a tight-throated bark doesn’t take much breath, but “you” said under your breath while slack-jawed can leave your lungs struggling to flap open like the wings of a startled raven even before the echoing “who” can begin its return.
Yes, and then there’s THIS poem.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5743080/bigfoots_love_slave.html?cat=47