The sound of porcupine teeth
in the oak’s crown,
as lethal as mistletoe.
Ahead of me on the path,
the tracks of three deer
braiding and unbraiding.
I reach inside my coat
and find a twig. It’s happening
sooner than I thought.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- January noon
- Primary sources
- Nuthatch
- Walking the line
- Gospel
- Wildstyle
- Close to home
- Lay of the land
- Primary school
- Subnivean
- Secondary school
- Rabid
- Snow plow
- Breaking through
- Miner
- Bark Ode
- Snowfall
- Pastoral
- Sledding
- Valentine’s Day dreams
- Rabbit
- Deep snow
- Head cold
- Snow follies
- Thaw
- Reanimation
- Old snow
- Clearing
- Burning the tissues
- Filmstrip
- How to tell the woodpeckers
- Opening
- Winterkill
- Winter sky, age 5
- March
- Downsizing
- Winter gardener
- Haustorial
- Vessels
- Grand jeté
- Threnody
- Evergreens
- Slush
- Out
- Snowmelt
- Emergence
- In place
- Cold Front
- The death of winter
- Salt
- Harbingers
- Wintergreen
- Evolution
- Camouflage
- Spruce grove
- Waiting to launch
- Tintype
- Terminology
- In good light
- Reach
- Old field
- Rain date
- Onion snow
- Rite of spring
- Searchers
- Migrants
- Camberwell Beauty
- Lotic
- Empty
- Walking onions
- Trailing arbutus
- Makeshift
- Risen
- Remnant
- Sleight-of-hand
(Haustorial: of, relating to, or having a haustorium. Haustorium: “the appendage or portion of a parasitic fungus (the hyphal tip) or of the root of a parasitic plant (such as the broomrape family or mistletoe) that penetrates the host’s tissue and draws nutrients from it.”)
I love this poem.
Thanks!
I love it too. Great word, great poem. The last line of each triplet’s especially, quietly, powerful.
Thanks! (And I welcome suggestions on what to call this poetic form of three unrhymed triplets or tercets. I think of them as 3/4ths because I’m consciously trying to avoid tying things up neatly at the end; I want them to remain open.)