rooster-crow and the repetitive tap
of a hammer like the tick
of a clock in the distance
woke me and I followed what
was left of your voice like the tracks
of an animal to the edge of the copper
water. Though I knew there were
Cottonmouths thick as ropes, I waded
into the cool shadows and then up
a hill where trees grew, preordained, laid
out in perfect rows like headstones. When
I had reached that place where
we had left the past, and shed even
our skins for love, I saw them:
the blackberries surrounded
by briers. Supple and sparkling
as jewels. The same ones that we
had subsisted on, with bleeding
fingers, for one afternoon
of our lives. And though
I remembered all the fears
we shared like sackcloth
and ashes, and I knew
the danger of reaching
into the unknown, (it seemed
like there were serpents waiting
beneath every beautiful thing)
blindly grasping for the sweetness
that everyone longs for, and I too
have always feared those things
I cannot see, I put my faith
in the innocence of nature. I tried
to believe in the benevolence
that exists if you go beyond
the fear, and so I found
them again: the blackberries,
the fruit not forbidden
to those who love, huge
and succulent, and so full
of grace, they were almost
too heavy to bear.
Jul 7, 2014
Jul 7, 2014 at 2:09 PM UTC
rooster-crow and the repetitive tap
of a hammer like the tick
of a clock in the distance
woke me and I followed what
was left of your voice like the tracks
of an animal to the edge of the copper
water. Though I knew there were
Cottonmouths thick as ropes, I waded
into the cool shadows and then up
a hill where trees grew, preordained, laid
out in perfect rows like headstones. When
I had reached that place where
we had left the past, and shed even
our skins for love, I saw them:
the blackberries surrounded
by briers. Supple and sparkling
as jewels. The same ones that we
had subsisted on, with bleeding
fingers, for one afternoon
of our lives. And though
I remembered all the fears
we shared like sackcloth
and ashes, and I knew
the danger of reaching
into the unknown, (it seemed
like there were serpents waiting
beneath every beautiful thing)
blindly grasping for the sweetness
that everyone longs for, and I too
have always feared those things
I cannot see, I put my faith
in the innocence of nature. I tried
to believe in the benevolence
that exists if you go beyond
the fear, and so I found
them again: the blackberries,
the fruit not forbidden
to those who love, huge
and succulent, and so full
of grace, they were almost
too heavy to bear.