BACKCOUNTRY BLEEDING
The trees bled bronze and ochre
across the hills and stood nude
except that lone red maple,
its leaves nourishing still.
On plush fallen spines
in an evergreen cluster
we shared our lunches
and more.
From there, hard to imagine
insidious spreading blight,
world-wide sequester,
piles of corpses.
In the pulse of crest and plunge,
breath stretched with breeze,
we thought we could hike
on and on, at will.
But you were slammed with sickness
before the first snow. By now, you
must have pierced the mist,
out-passed the last crest.
When you faced your final winter
did you yearn to huddle, to
recollect your memories,
or did you bare to cold?
If I knew,
would my gut
un-wrench?
WATERFALL GAMBOL
No bushwack:
a worn path through woods
leaf crunch, ferny luxe -
on past the path,
past trail markers,
past clock time
and no Niagara:
a modest range of
three tiered waterfalls
mossed flourishing shores,
cool water chimes
pellucid
no swim suits:
boots hung on shoestrings
you, the first to plunge
me, each joint a gasp
but then, giggling immersion
goosebump cavort
deep into
spring-fed water
touching elemental
touching
no lanky athlete:
cautious waterfall ascent
on flow-honed boulders
mermaid inspiration,
languid delight
no ownership:
we’ll come again by hunch.
Others may tramp and dip
but it persists as
our covert haven.
JUST ONE THING
In the afterglow
we sleep with limbs entwined
so which is whose limb hardly matters
a sleep so deep
we wake reprieved.
But your leg presses on my bruised shin.
I squirm to reposition
without breaching jointure
with words.
There’s always
just
one
thing
reminds me that the invitation says -
in letters smudged by snot or anger –
ground yourself, you shard of clay!
And so it was in my first memory:
I’m sucking from my mother
ecstatic - the whole all one
in pulsing harmony -
but my neck
was twisted sideways
and I had no way
to tell her.
Mary Newell authored the poetry chapbooks Re-SURGE and TILT/ HOVER/ VEER (Codhill Press), poems in journals and anthologies, and essays including “When Poetry Rivers” (Interim journal 38.3). Co-editor of Poetics for the More-than-Human-World: An Anthology of Poetry and Commentary and the Routledge Companion to Ecopoetics, Newell teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Connecticut, Stamford. Newell (MA Columbia, BA Berkeley) received a doctorate from Fordham University with a focus on environment and embodiment in contemporary women’s writing.