"Wild Hush" by Susan Solomon
lBirch Tree in Winter
I’ve known sunburns to peel in just this way.
You want to help them along, to get down
to the new flesh underneath. This time of year,
the curls of bark are brittle, like skin
the snake slid out of long ago, fluttering
in the woods, while the tree remains rooted,
or seems to, until storm. Shags of paper
hang on, ragged, outgrown, and the brown
remnants of catkins, which in fall rained down
a thick yellow dust to coat the deck.
A chickadee jumps from perch to perch
then is briefly still, his black-capped head
another node on the white of the bark,
his wing another scar. The tree absorbs him,
then ejects him with a shiver of its branches,
white against the snowy roofs angled
and peaked against the sky. Ungloved,
my hands encircle the frozen, stalwart trunk,
I remember when the toothed leaves
were limber, flitting and pattering in the warm
June wind, and the pink beneath the paper
swelled like a newborn under the birch’s skin.
I’ve known sunburns to peel in just this way.
You want to help them along, to get down
to the new flesh underneath. This time of year,
the curls of bark are brittle, like skin
the snake slid out of long ago, fluttering
in the woods, while the tree remains rooted,
or seems to, until storm. Shags of paper
hang on, ragged, outgrown, and the brown
remnants of catkins, which in fall rained down
a thick yellow dust to coat the deck.
A chickadee jumps from perch to perch
then is briefly still, his black-capped head
another node on the white of the bark,
his wing another scar. The tree absorbs him,
then ejects him with a shiver of its branches,
white against the snowy roofs angled
and peaked against the sky. Ungloved,
my hands encircle the frozen, stalwart trunk,
I remember when the toothed leaves
were limber, flitting and pattering in the warm
June wind, and the pink beneath the paper
swelled like a newborn under the birch’s skin.
Jeanne Emmons has published three books of poetry: The Glove of the World, winner of the Backwaters Press Reader's Choice Award; Baseball Nights and DDT (Pecan Grove Press), and Rootbound, winner of the New Rivers Press Minnesota Voices Competition. She has won the Comstock poetry prize, the James Hearst Poetry Award, and the Sow's Ear poetry award, among others. Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly, The American Scholar, Carolina Quarterly, Louisiana Literature, South Carolina Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, The River Styx, South Dakota Review, and many other journals. She is poetry editor of the Briar Cliff Review. She lives in McCook Lake, South Dakota.
Susan Solomon is a freelance painter living in St. Paul, Minnesota. She also edits and cartoons Sleet Magazine, an online literary journal. Susan was recently laid off from her medical office job after 11 years and is now happily painting full time. She is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the same school that claims David Lynch as an alumni. To view more paintings, please visit www.susansolomonpainter.com
"Wild Hush" first appeared as the cover art for Wild Hush by poet Su Smallen (Red Bird Chapbooks 2014).
"Wild Hush" first appeared as the cover art for Wild Hush by poet Su Smallen (Red Bird Chapbooks 2014).
