The Blackberry Archives

Catch me here,
with brambles in my feet
and leaves in my hair;
I can feel my blood
rushing, rushing
against the earth,
the soil of my fathers' bones.
Their tears, their toil; it has shaped
this place, given it life, burden,
fruit.

Something tells me to cloak myself
in raw emotions
and leave my hair
wild and unbound.
I am the couching lioness
you always told me I was:
flashing eyes and a twitching tail,
untamed in this chaos.

Flashforward-rewind-taketwosteps
into the future, and watch
what we can unfold.

I'm thirty-five now, and bringing the kids here always reminds me of the summers I spent playing with my cousins and walking in the woods when I was young. Mom made amazing bread, and I cooked dinner while the kids made a salad. (That was always my job. I cut vegetables while the boys set the table and my grandmother cooked.)
Tonight we're going to spend some time looking through the old photo albums. I'm going to tell them about their great-grandparents and the history of this land. I want them to know about their inheritance and treasure this place in the way that so many generations before them have...
--

This is the place
where we remember,
where the blood of our ancestors
runs up through the springs
and into ourselves.
We grow up, grow old
and the cycle continues
with our children.
Our children,
playing
under the hickory tree.