poem about a special place |
Potpourri In the smallest township in Massachusetts, off a dirt road on a mountain in the Berkshires, there is a clearing where in late summer's warmth yellow cinquefoil and ruddy bearberries hide close to the ground, where white yarrow with its pungent, lacy leaves, glossy wintergreen, medicinal wild thyme and sweet woodfern grow, where pine needles carpet the edge of the wood, creating a harmony of fragrance. They release their quiet hymns among the old, stone markers, around the granite boulder which my father heaved from a streambed with the force of his grief, and left in that graveyard, chiseled with the name of my too early-born, three-day sister, Jane. Long mourned by my mother, that frail, blond, second baby might have been a balance for her older, darker sister: might have grown to become my closest friend. Upon that mountain, where my life began, conceived beneath an August moon, and where my sister's ended, under an August sun, the white pines sigh serene in the wind, the elms, the oaks and sugar maples bud, flame and die, to bloom again, and snow falls from the night sky with a silent glow, a comfort to the ground in bitter weather. In that consecrated clearing few noises break the hush: squirrels chatter, chickadees call, owls ask their question; rain sings its lullabies, bone-rattling mountain thunder speaks; ice chimes and snaps in the birch and aspen boughs. It is a good place to return to, where few visitors but shadows pass, while seasons, sun and moon keep track of all the time there is. Sarah Unsworth MacMillan August 2009 |