Julie U’Ren

Now mingling with magpies

Under my feet

fallen leaves

and bark

crunch

a dead grey box’s

bare branches reach out

tossed shredded bark  

hangs like a dropped skirt

from its smooth trunk

Still air wraps around me

I apply balm to my dry lips,

again

a slice of hill

leaks dark rocks,

a fruitcake mix

of clay, quartz,

golden stones

I wonder when will I know this as my new home

earlier, before dawn

the magpie chorus wakes me

(I can still name the birds

that once woke me

on steamy northern mornings )

Madeleine McClelland

Heartwood

Heft of wrinkled grey.

Dark faced hollows,

framed with squiggles of insects’ embroidery.   

Tentative fingers crack her fragile bark,  

the smallest of many encroachments

long-withstood.

Her cradled heartwood,

still standing

in its own memorial.

Miner’s Cheek

In a creek pile of rocks

hewn by hands or flows,

this one glows.

Nude flesh quartz.

Opaque mineral.

Dense pink chunk,

a miner’s cheek.

Shale flecks nick its

powdery cracks.

Rocks reverberate on firm limb

a double-weighted lump

turned out on the bed.

Crude visitor from the underside

its alluvial movements measure distance from the old mine.