Up the tree or down the tree

Genevieve Kaplan

 

 

                                                     running along the wire, the fence

through the leaves on the ground (a dry crunch, a deep

pleasure). night comes, along after the day and the weather

is back again, the hum of the distance, and who needs

what I’ll send them to, or when, in the open field, where

the animals are small and mild, natural. they flirt

with me after all, admiring my hair and my boundaries

and my tired age.

 

                                               in my head, and all around it, the gentle

shaking, there, down from the limbs, on the soil, the ground

in the path where it smells like peaches, green curry, spicy

bay. I haven’t made one, I never found one, I sat still

all day and tried not to let anyone see in the heart (of the space)

of the clearing, the slight wind that stalls just nearby, there

 

 

 

~~~~~

Genevieve Kaplan's work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming from Rhino, Western Humanities Review, and Terrain.org: a Journal of the Built and Natural Environments. Her book of poetry, In the ice house, is available from Red Hen Press.