Gather

by GEORGE PERREAULT

blueblack, too soon for sparkled spiders
when a boy I can barely recall walks out
through memory where nightwet fields slope
to the brook valley, the woods that remain,
hand-fashioned houses and barns, abandoned
potato fields poorer than Ireland, an apple
here or there dropped in the orchard’s shards

a boy I barely remember, up early to crow racket,
eyes what else has slid through sumac thickets, through
thick grass uncut decades now, tangled thimbleberries
too soon for the day sphinx, eyes what else foraged
the bruised fruits (that strategy for increase, that
propagation of uncertainty)—porcupine or fox perhaps
also eating, then the uncivilized disposition of seed

the ancient way of the world before tribes or even
packs, a shifting alliance of birds, predawn
murder calling through the dark, this boy’s hands
tracing lines in the air, rhythm over rhyme, breath
the measure of all things, juice-stained fingers
signing someday you will remember this, sweet
berries taken in the dark to deposit darker still