By: Jennifer Harrison
Clearing
last year the throttle and blade tore through
the allelopathy, the chipmunks, the old trunks
where the spotted mushrooms laced the duff
scrambling the moonshore, the language beneath
where the snakes curled and the frogs hopped limb
discouraging the blae backed swallows
from their courtly dips and bows
now she breathes her agony up from the ground
where the wheels flattened the berry bushes
beheaded and obliterated the violet
and white dotted forest flowers
filled her shallow rabbit burrows with mud
demolished her ancient mycorrhizal network
in a day's labor
I am searching for your hand
so together we
can make meaning
I can hear you
whispering to me how to
get good at death
more of this
we don't arrive by train anymore
germs are everywhere
we try to explain to our
children how the open fields
once spread out
like a thousand bedrooms of golden
hair sewn together in a waving sea
of honey
how the scented forest
& mushrooms that covered them
were the medicine we'd take
how tree bark smelled on our cheeks
how the ocean held back from
swallowing cities whole
& the shells we collected
kept the sound of the sea
like a tiny music box
locked inside
for reminder.
we look out over it now
we are not over it now
the mounds of ash scratching our throat
the clearcut scars of land pocked across infinity
the sun scalded fruit we cannot eat
we photocopy pictures
of the poison frog, the Hawaiian crow, the scimitar oryx
like mythic creatures in a fairytale
mothers are asked the reasons for this
why they all went away
but it all sounds nonsensical
we teach the children about the adults
who put their hands where they should not
we prepare them to protect & defend
the children they think about this
then say: was it them who controlled the land?
beat it senseless? stole from it? ravaged it shut?
poisoned it?
sometimes when we are drunk
or exhausted we are honest enough to say
no, it was all of us
maybe it wasn't those
who in the gloam
flung themselves across the dam
or tied their torso to a tree
or cut chicken wire to release the
animals to run
they too are gone
like the Yangtze river dolphin
now spread midair in magazine
we mask our children
before they go out to play
we buy groceries in the middle of the night
say our prayers by morning:
give me a hammock
and trees to hug it
sheets of rain for the fires
a river running clean
an earth mother
with warm loving eyes
Jennifer Harrison is a poet living in Seattle. Her debut chapbook will be published by Dancing Girl Press in late 2022.