Sherry Chandler » Behind the Blackberry Thicket
Behind the Blackberry Thicket
Crashing through, I find a grove,
sycamore, ash, a single maple.
The deer take refuge here unhampered
by the mass of blackberries
and goldenrod, monarchs and bees,
that excludes a thing my shape.
Between the trees
along the leaf-mold floor,
grapevines twine like Laocoön’s snakes,
binding all into slow silence.
Twenty years since the astonished dog
cornered a crawdad in what I’d thought
was just another hayfield,
this wet-weather streambed,
not a place to mow or plow.
Focused on the quick –
children, garden, livestock —
I did not see this wilderness of vines
and saplings transform itself into a woods.
Originally published at the New Voices International Project
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2 Comments
1. Helen Losse replies at 20th April 2008, 7:05 pm :
Sherry, that’s lovely. I like the “leaf-mold floor,” the “slow silence,” and the “wet-weather streambed” that makes the “tranform[ation]” possible.
2. sherry replies at 20th April 2008, 8:42 pm :
Thanks, Helen. This poem is one that I continue to think I did a pretty good job with. And, if you discount the title, it is exactly 100 words long.
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