i check the bleuets on the boundary to the west feral shrubs in reclaimed and overgrown prairie teeming with life the berries are still pink-sky-sunset blue not yet dusty indigo blue i’ll check again tomorrow like i did yesterday
a lone deer forages in the freshly seeded field to the north probably soybean this year, i say with confidence after observing rotation and rest patterns for nitrogen, for six summers, now
i raise my hands up slow and high surrendering to the deer to show i don’t have a gun /on me/ or a bow or blade, bought or made my tradition is not forged steel and gunpowder, my ceremony is not stone, bone, shaft and feather,
my nature is not always claws these days
i hold my mouth, soft, open in a weird smile to show i have no usable canines
i transmit a thought, a query concerning the herd “where are the six you lived and walked with all last winter?” there’s no response to my attempt at telepathy — although — oneday
i emanate waves of empathy out from my heart — i imagine them like Lake Michigan gently lapping at the local beach and hope that kin feels it
originally published june 17, 2016, revised june 11, 2023
* please visit the website/app Falling Fruit to add a fruiting tree that is located and accessible in the public way to the foraging database for others.
the author’s mulberry-stained fingers
A clear glimpse
A clear thought
on this clear June night
Of age,
and Alzheimer’s
the old-timer’s disease
A clear memory recorded and archived tonight
An acute awareness of myself
tonight, in time and place
a new track to play on loop for a listener in my future life
a husband, friend, or son
a caregiver, a kind one
a visitor, volunteer, or nurse,
a grandson, or maybe — no one
A reddish dog, eating mulberries
from the sidewalk in shadows
Mottled concrete in the dim light of a city street lamp
obscured by the canopy of that beautiful, June, fruit tree
Woody Guthrie, the mulberry forager
A woman, middle aged, seems so young, even a tad pretty, in her mind’s eye now
Stretching her still strong body upward for plump, dark berries
Reaching for branches trimmed too high by the urban foresters
or arborists or surgeons, I forget what they’re called
On her tippy toes
grabbing, pulling, picking
squeezing the dog’s leash between her thighs
don’t let him get loose in the dark, don’t let him get skunked in the dark
a contorted mulberry tree at night, located in a private front yard, but sidewalk spillage is fair game
the same contorted mulberry in Sun’s light: wowowow
Some of the best ones are lost in the awkward tussle
before she can palm them, save them, taste them
She triggers a reverberative rain from boughs on high
That precise, delicate sweetness of the bounty in her mouth
The dog’s belly full of the ripe windfall
sustained by both gravity and this woman
His name was Woody, or Digby, I think
He used to climb into our sleep
Smashed and whole
The street, sidewalk and cars stained
by the impressive purple mess
the dark grass hiding perfect treasures for doves tomorrow morn
She and that dog,
They were urban foragers and gleaners in June.
All month long, her fingertips, feet and lips
tinted with their fuchsia dye, it didn’t even once occur to her to check his paws
A clear, recollection of acute melancholy:
this day — that day was also her son’s birthday //
The first birthday he ever spent away from home, away from her — in Nebraska, or was it Alaska?
That glorious tree, that good dog, that golden boy
an impressive purple mess-feast
i pressed a twig and berries from the Le Claire street mulberry, before I moved to the otherside of the Lake; i used my Chicago Botanic Garden gift shop flower press.
i pressed a twig and berries from the Le Claire street mulberry, before I moved to the otherside of the Lake; i used my Chicago Botanic Garden gift shop flower press.
how can i “calm down” when all i feel is love and rage, when all i experience is beauty and pain/ no in-between / pass the cab and the kettle corn / and if you didn’t want me to opine on fresh-cut flowers and this film — then why, why, why – did you insist that my eyes see them – yes, i know there are flower farms —— but have you heard that pollinators aren’t allowed indoors around vases? it’s none of anyone’s business how many time i’ve seen “Almost Famous!”
yes, i am a mother, and i drink too much wine, sometimes — but he’s in Albuquerque not in a crib in the next room — i wish time travel were true // and other times, wine is not enough to squelch the pangs – of 18 years gone in a flash but thousands of hours wasted on PTA — and fucking homework ! /// i took my kid road-tripping and camping, sent him to the SCA and The Tetons to keep him out of these systems — how many huckleberry milkshakes at the Pioneer Grill does it take to finally see mountains and bears and rivers and trees as real living persons? well, i can actually tell you!
we had our deep talks, but not enough, never — how can time spent philosophizing be measured? in life choices and paths — that’s how. and i’m proud.
can you make a pact with me and promise i’ll never have to eat these words – especially the rants — and when, not if, i say something really wrong — you’ll push bowls of fresh figs and olives in my face to shut me up as a signal? salsa and chips will work too
can i tell you i’m broken without you trying to fix me? can you tell i’m broken — or do i wear it well? do these big feelings make my brain look small?
never stop showing me the radiance of you just because i’m dark — someone has to be the shadow, the mourning veil, the contrarian — and i know i volunteered — a long time ago — but “at some point” i really would appreciate a different assignment?
the birds’ choir is a mockery outside my window, eight different species on the sill — eight — for gods’ sake!
these days when the Sun’s arc is long and the soil is warming for the season — and permanently
i am in my bed with lead bones annoyed that i woke up again, and guilty with an ungratefulness about it
my steady lament is sung out loud — but still unheard i counted my mistakes like sheep, to sleep again they didn’t wander away though they stay close to their shepherd, always
they say Death comes in threes and that’s true but it still hasn’t chosen me instead, conscripting two complacent men, known to me, thirty-six, fifty three, in one week’s time — why? while i’m out here volunteering for the cause it cruelly searches elsewhere to complete their trio
of course i’m still fucking here! the gods won’t give you what you pray for!
courage, love, fidelity, life, death
they’re full of motherfuckery they know exactly what i — and what you, want most — of all
Portrait of The Artist in her pink chair. “I 👁️♥️U”
the volume of love, tenderness, peace, comfort, safety, and security
that she so profoundly deserves
might never be offered in the sustained abundance
requisite
for her to heal
from our
sins against her and hers,
our sins, once or twice removed, from us — or so we proudly imagine//
we failed her and hers — over and over again
in our refusal to just stop
in our refusal to just start
in our refusal to just not
so her and hers’ trauma untreated became epigenetic, chronic, lethal
her sorrow and rage manifest in righteous and rightful litanies against our society, our systems, and the falseness of our lives //
because of us, because of the world we’ve built, maintain or co-sign for privilege
her and hers’ lives remain
unfair unstable unsafe
un “forfilled”
she has not for one single moment stopped working and fighting to live and thrive for her and hers
ease, rest and respite are not her companions
her pursuit for her and hers truth and justice — and for universal justice and truth is unrelenting and well-beyond humbling //
let none of us proclaim her “strong” or “survivor” — those titles are unwanted blood medals forced around her neck standing atop a podium made of her ancestors’ and son’s bones and of her own
she is more,
so very much more,
more
than her 66 year-long sentence of struggle, more than this 404 year-long American genocide and apartheid
she is an activist, a mother-warrior, a revolutionary
but
all she ever wanted was to be
a baby, a child, a daughter, a sister, a woman, a mother, a lover, a friend, an aunt, a grandmother, an artist, a poet, a writer, a philosopher, a scientist, an historian, a teacher, an advocate, a protector, a provider,
Arte Digitora derived from the poems: “On Doing” & “Dream Gerund”
On Doing
I have a compulsion to do.
But sometimes/often just want recline.
And the softness [and] of being. Pulled tight into a cocoon & the doing hushed out of me and filled with prairie definitions.
My untold untyped Great/lake fantasies.
Fallen grass tufts and waterproof boot slosh and plant names and hours of dendrochronology with fantas/tical idealized notions of rubbing and human collision, of being.
July nothingness would be a dream come true I close my eyes to it and do and do and do.
~ juggernaut
On July 19, 2022, upon noting the correspondence between the words “doing”, “being” and “dream” in the above poem and the published poem “Dream Gerund” both written by the same poet — I created a digital derivative work – works which I now refer to by the neologism that I conceived:
if i just stay quiet, quieter than the snake and mole i saw yesterday, if i just stay inside, unseen, all day ‘til Sun’s set, like the possum i saw last night, then kin may seek refuge, find sanctuary here
to catch their breath
some of us have forgotten that they too breathe
and feel fear,
and scream, wail, and mourn
run!!! come, run here!!! stay here, please, the roads to west and south also bring death!
i put all my faith into telepathy today
the gulls arrive chasing and taunting the tractor driver,
he’s no farmer his hands literally never touch soil or seed
a machine operating a machine guided by satellite
if only the gulls or crows would pluck out his eyes when he dismounts
in the rearview mirror i see it was a gift an impromptu roadside picnic a rendezvous along a fast-flowing river
we slip into a raft, built for two, gently floating, taking turns describing what we see, feel/who we are/ entering rapids, our hearts racing, ceaseless throbbing/ then paddling furiously, having to steer/ and suddenly, the fear
nearsighted, you caught a life ring, rescuing yourself on a familiar and safe shore/ i stayed aboard and roared toward the falls alone, extending the ride, the adventure, the hope of it, all/ forcefully plummeting and suddenly submerged into dark and powerful waters
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 