HOLYWELL GROVE
here in the cage
of moss-strung tree
bent toward earth—
good soil, dark-
thick with green
& rundown of rain
that kissed the dead,
buried warm, or nameless,
or in flower-’dorned
stone made smooth—
standing in shallow
roots, place shaped
“home” in blue-trim
only— step & it’s
another graveyard
step &
another branch
to bend beneath
step &
it’s land far older
step &
hallowed, deeper,
step &
clutch lantern’s, I am told,
sun-made glow
step to
names now familiar,
quilt of clovered
headstone
step &
somewhere, birdsong
remembers names
stone-worn
stand over
headstone toppled
& do I ? tell of this rain’s
kiss or that chain
-linked elegy
or of grass now
Eternity left—
I am where she called, in
smaller voice than body,
for “Home” —I am in a place
dreamed of, longer than
words wove this wonder
& know, now, there
are green worlds here,
too — by the hill’s slope
up, towards road, and On.
BALSMBEE
it is a ritual as old as these bodies:
I.
The smooth of her hands—soft
over his, working salve
over rough ridges—
a hated skin. The line, its faults—
a blossom over quiet.
II.
Forget winter & sun’s salt—
this place we held so holy,
like prayer & pilgrims,
the skin brought together
sweetly—her palms over
knuckles, over fingertops—
III.
animal fingers into tin,
mouth wine dry,
to scoop salve across
fingers entombed—
worm-woven, enveloped in
earthskin again, again over one-
-another until one.
the self a kind
of motherchild;
the buried and its dirt
a kind of system
the syntax, broken—
IV.
above, stars the bodies loved,
once, when skin lived split
in ions, shape in sphere—but it is
only this bed’s edge, two bodies
worlds away; I give as
a molded melon collapses
into self— to let space around slip in
& she, the first mother—
did she do this for love, too?
Natalia Sperry is a poet based in Fort Collins, where she is currently pursuing an MFA at Colorado State University. Her work has previously appeared in Five South’s The Weekly, where her poem “milkteeth” was nominated for Best of the Net, as well as in Greyrock Review and Spiritus Mundi. She also works as an editorial assistant for Colorado Review.