Читать книгу Swan Bones - Bethany Bowman - Страница 14

Twig tea. I sip you and I’m wild again,

bringing my master gifts.

I read that you’re brewed in Liji,

just south of Kyoto,

from discarded stems, stalks,

leftovers from more rife greens;

that you’re not a “true” tea.

This makes me sad.

How can anything so woody,

so vegetal emerge from waste,

have secrets to hide?

Clearly you come from the land

of higuma, the Hokkaido brown bear.

I’m in need of a near-death experience;

I will drink.

I’ll put my trust in records,

since 1962: 86 attacks and 33 passings.

Steaming earth aromas.

I inhaled them while pregnant

and found myself singing

the song of a creek bed.

Brook trout so brown, like home,

one modest female mallard

swimming away from the bridge

with her mate, and yellow celandine—

blossoms I’ve known since childhood

which, if you rip the stem,

drip with nitid paint.

I will pick one when the rain falls.

This way, I’ll have something to wash

from my skin before I begin to browse,

time to confess,

because once I’m born again

I will strip every bit of stiffness

from your branches,

caper with boastful wings,

disable a dreamer’s voice box.

Only then, when my love’s green head

lies calm and still, will I deliver him back,

tenderly, to the cement block steps

of the porch he will finish someday.