black bodies in nature

Blossom Diptych – Day 26

| Sheree

1.

Blink twice and I miss you. Not wanting to make this mistake again, I watch for your arrival. Then once here, bask in your delicate beauty. Each bursting cluster unique. Soft and curled petals, blush and flush, fuchsia, rose, and pink.

I pray for the wind to stay away, to go away as with each gust you are forced to separate from your centre pistil and disperse like confetti. Floating upon the air to land anywhere. And then it’s over for another year. Short-lived gone in the wind.

2.

Each year you return with an open palm, gentle and vulnerable. I see you watching me. I wait for my time. I put on a display of tight fisted pink buds as a promise. A promise that soon comes. To blaze in my glory is a gift I cherish. As soon gone. Drifting off in the wind to become more in time.

Sakura – Day 16

| Sheree

At the tail end of winter,

loaded with blousy, pink,

double flowers with frilly edges,

are Japanese blooming cherry

trees. At mere sight,

I become mooncalf,

mooning over their delicate

blooms. Reborn.

For a few weeks at least,

hope trembles through

the boughs.

The present moment

like each pink, soft cluster,

is cherished.

The Belly of a Mountain – Day 10

| Sheree
Glencoe, Scottish Highlands

We obscure the outline of the belly of a mountain*

when we write about nature

we enter the realm of words being useless

we enter our narcissistic imaginations instead of being in with the mountain

I miss the mountains, the Highlands, Glencoe

At some point, I became marred by immobility, by staying close, staying safe

Now I return in my dreams, awake and grapple to describe their grace and poise

Abstracted longing. Never enough, never true enough to capture their form, their presence

I wait for my return. To sleep within the belly of mountains,

the mountains I’ve always felt are old Black women resting together, safe

*Day 10 prompt was: Find a single sentence someone else wrote that sticks out to you and use it as your first line. Let your poem unfold from there.

This adapted line was taken from ‘Against Nature Writing’ by Charles Foster.