The Briar Maid
When I slip off this
rumpled dress and slide
down the gullet of time;
when I go, and it won't be long
no matter how long;
I want what they take
from the oven to lie
at the tangleroot feet of
the Briar Maid.
She is faceless, fierce, ever
green as her puncture-vine cloak
drawing blood at the touch;
though I pull her strangling hands
from oak and hackberry,
with her thorns she circles sanctuary.
Whatever is left that lives knows
she marks the line
past which Time may not go.
She stands guard,
through cyclone wind,
drought, wildfire and freeze,
for grey squirrels' trees,
for greybrown birds
fed fat on sunflower, blackberry
acorn and mulberry,for
peanut thieves, my blue bickering jays
and black satin crows;
box turtle and
blister-beetle know,
roving armadillo, red-tail hawk, butterfly
in his last piece of sky, prairie
grass and the snakes that swim it,
rat and king, garden, garter
and copper-headed,
each thing secure in itssmall life to come and go.
holds safe underground
as will I, ash-soul in place,
faceless, fierce
to feed and to become
with her in season
ward and warden of that space
that was my land, that was my heart,
that is the last try
for all that's been loved
too hard, too long,
too strong
to die.
October 2022
posted for earthweal's
For those who want to know her better, my original 2013 poem about The Briar Girl is here.
Photos © joyannjones
