Issue 7 - Lauren Camp

Settling Under A Yellowwood Tree

Her withered tissue and gaunt frame move

through the emerald meadow of her yard.

She takes small steps that pinch the earth.

It’s a strange sort of knowledge, watching

a stranger getting close to the privacy

of ground. She stands in a faded jacket

under long branches of her yellowwood tree,

facing west into the rim of sun.

Hunched in memory, she is almost seeds.

She soaked the ravenous dirt – this acre,

once prickled and rocky. She built

a protective fertile marrow. Days stretched

into their fires and spectacle. The sun

colored each sigh. When there was illness,

terror or unhappy habit, the dirt under

her nails saved her. Trees lengthened

into the proud film of clouds as her little boys

married and moved on. The plants

became her range of gesture and emotion.

Her yellow-gray eyes survey her flourishing

garden: the slim thicket of aspen with

soft ceilings of leaves, a cultivated corner

of felted horehound and bishop’s weed,

small fissions of sage and agapanthus,

and the yarrow thrust forward with a fringe

of urgency. No matter what happened

indoors, silkworms slipped from the green.

This is where life rippled up.

The garden spreads out, velvet and jeweled

though her blossoms are long since spent.

Finches and jays ricochet past, squawking.

Daylight curves to dusk in a filigree of blue;

she is sloping into darkness. Her eyes wilt,

lids nearly translucent. Her voice stirs

in a series of tiny wingbeats. I lean in

to catch her words, but the wind soughs,

carries them away. We are strangers, she and I.

I read the landscape of lines on her face,

then look again at the echoes of color,

the flat stones leading deeper, the crag

of the wall. Here, there is always something

to wake up to, and time enough to make it grow.

--Lauren Camp

Featured Poet, Lauren Camp is the author of the poetry collection, This Business of Wisdom (West End Press), and is the host/producer of “Audio Saucepan,” a weekly music/poetry show on KSFR-FM. She is also a visual artist. Lauren blogs about poetry and its intersections with art and music at Which Silk Shirt. She lives in a rural farming village near Santa Fe. www.laurencamp.com

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