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The Wicker Chronicles: Essays, Poetry, Short Fiction
Monday, 5 May 2008
Summer*

Across the parking lot there's an overgrown field, a vacant lot... but it is anything but empty. Each morning as I get out of my car, I can hear the insects whirring and clicking, the rustle of leaves and thrum of woody limbs vibrating in the wind.  Each evening as dusk comes, birds call and busy themselves before dark, the field purrs and stretches languidly in the wind. It says, "Come."

I'm wearing my work clothes, button-down shirt and silk tie, dress shoes, pressed khaki pants. Dry-cleaning is expensive, and grass stains? I can see the look of horror on the elderly cleaning lady's face as I drop off my clothes, burrs and mud and green tendrils everywhere. “What have you been doing?” her look says, speaking volumes about what is acceptable, appropriate, proper.  My co-workers think I have gone mad. Tittering behind their gray cubicle walls, they exchange glances as I walk by, eyeing an errant leaf stuck to my sleeve, a feather in my hair...

They don’t suspect that
I have become a Creature of the Field

I grip the thick muscle of Summer
as it heaves and wakes from slumber

I hear the streets crackle
with vines of green fire as Nature feasts

apple blossoms boom like cannons
sweetpea pods burst seams
mercenary oakroots march

I am watered and alive again
satiated
full of sap and light

*this is an updated version of a poem I wrote in 2001.


Posted by blog/wicker_chronicles at 11:28 AM CDT
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