POISONWOOD TREE, BY KASEY JUEDS |
|
Again, the white line of trail dividing the marsh — a seam, a scar. Again, your leaves in the trance of breeze, hushing as if to soothe a child. This time, I am not a child. This time, I know your name, and the red ache your sap raises on skin. How you bloom in a different season, blanched as a bride, or ghost in some story simpler than this one. You bloom and fruit and feed the rarest pigeon, white crowned — though there is no queen here but water and sky and the distance they conspire between them. Here, signs warn not to touch, not to stand beneath your dripping branches after storm, the frantic rains that draw the fish to deep water and summon the wading birds to feed: white, white, and black and pink, they know to stay steadfast. For them, no question of how to return. Some voice asks to be let in, some voice your leaves keep trying to shush. You were never meant as shelter. The water and sky reach for each other, and nothing says not to want, nothing says not to be afraid. |
Kasey Jueds is the author of two collections of poetry, both from the University of Pittsburgh Press: Keeper, which won the 2012 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and The Thicket, forthcoming in 2021. Her work can be found in journals including American Poetry Review, Crazyhorse, Narrative, Beloit Poetry Journal, Ninth Letter, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, and Pleiades. She lives in the mountains of New York State with one human, a spotted dog, and many houseplants.