Poetry by Emily Donaldson
A scrambled egg breakfast,
a pocket clementine, tea.
Heavy boots pulled over wool socks,
knowing each step will be unsteadied
by the hungry latch of mud season.
Resident red breasted robins dart in undergrowth.
Crows call to each other from the wood.
Steam rises from the tea, curls like frost smoke
above the last vestiges of snow.
A wrack line of melting ice gravid with topsoil, softening.
The mud-stirred rush, sharp and sweet.
The ovary of a former flower, pulled first from its branch,
and then from my pocket. Clementine peels dropped as eggshells,
as petals. Pulling spongy ribbons of pith from half-moons, as fine as root hairs,
jagged as lightening.
A striking vision of seasonal return, this jeweled orbit:
ruby-crowned kinglets, blue-headed vireos,
yellow-bellied sapsuckers reclaiming their home
amidst black capped chickadees and wheeling starlings.
Calling the promise of nests, of precious eggs cradled in
loose twigs, chaos ordered with care. Their nocturnal flights
under cover of darkness like glittering comets,
bringing new life to beloved ground.
Showing us to make home in the dead wood.
And I, having devoured the world in a morning,
wingless, nursing citrus sting on cracked lip,
whisper thanks.
Emily Donaldson writes as a way to connect with everything around her, and to explore the relationship between the natural and our inner worlds.
