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  • 标题:Barrens Willow.
  • 作者:Steffler, John
  • 期刊名称:ARC Poetry Magazine
  • 印刷版ISSN:1910-3239
  • 出版年度:2012
  • 期号:December
  • 语种:English
  • 出版社:Arc Poetry Society
  • 摘要:
     Barrens Willow     Dumb giant, I have no words to fit what I find on Burnt    Cape: joints of a sprawled octopus-sized tree, its roots, or    are they branches, meshed with a moss-clump meshed    with a shrunken alder, or is it bearberry, sharing various leaves.     What looks like a driftwood stick--white, gnarled: I reach    to touch--is hard as a porcelain handle bolted down, bone    beads stuccoed into the somehow live grain.     Leaf-puddle tree flush with the gravel it grows in--is    the willow something the great gull of winter shat    from the sky?     Unnatural snake twisting up from a cold cleft into sun,    opening a mouthful of leaves.     It follows philosophy rather than habit, adopting any form    to suit its needs: trunk prone or upright, limbs fountaining    or burrowing.     Everything wants first of all something to hook to--a    father's songs, a sedum stem to catch a windblown seagull's    breast feather. A larch needle halts in the feather's lea. Lichen    crumbs, moss dander sift in. A willow seed opens    a trunk of its mother's letters. 

    from Lookout (McClelland & Stewart, 2010) reprinted by permission of McClelland & Stewart

Barrens Willow.


Steffler, John


Barrens Willow

   Dumb giant, I have no words to fit what I find on Burnt
   Cape: joints of a sprawled octopus-sized tree, its roots, or
   are they branches, meshed with a moss-clump meshed
   with a shrunken alder, or is it bearberry, sharing various leaves.

   What looks like a driftwood stick--white, gnarled: I reach
   to touch--is hard as a porcelain handle bolted down, bone
   beads stuccoed into the somehow live grain.

   Leaf-puddle tree flush with the gravel it grows in--is
   the willow something the great gull of winter shat
   from the sky?

   Unnatural snake twisting up from a cold cleft into sun,
   opening a mouthful of leaves.

   It follows philosophy rather than habit, adopting any form
   to suit its needs: trunk prone or upright, limbs fountaining
   or burrowing.

   Everything wants first of all something to hook to--a
   father's songs, a sedum stem to catch a windblown seagull's
   breast feather. A larch needle halts in the feather's lea. Lichen
   crumbs, moss dander sift in. A willow seed opens
   a trunk of its mother's letters.

from Lookout (McClelland & Stewart, 2010) reprinted by permission of McClelland & Stewart


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