Potpourri

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