The Days Stretch Wide and Snap Back
Last year’s garlic
bunched and hanging like quarter
notes
from the rafter
where we strung it to dry months ago
A reminder that not everything
gets done in our short season
& still we rise, 4:30 am
sun leaning
its sweaty hand to our backs
wheelbarrow pregnant
with bindweed
Did you think this would be easy?
chipmunk asks, as she takes
one bite
from every strawberry
It could have been otherwise,
I think, gathering dusk colored boletes
like apples from the forest floor
until the light of the mushroom
and the light of the sun fade
one into the other
& I cannot tell from the darkness
what to gather, what to leave
bunched and hanging like quarter
notes
from the rafter
where we strung it to dry months ago
A reminder that not everything
gets done in our short season
& still we rise, 4:30 am
sun leaning
its sweaty hand to our backs
wheelbarrow pregnant
with bindweed
Did you think this would be easy?
chipmunk asks, as she takes
one bite
from every strawberry
It could have been otherwise,
I think, gathering dusk colored boletes
like apples from the forest floor
until the light of the mushroom
and the light of the sun fade
one into the other
& I cannot tell from the darkness
what to gather, what to leave
May 2024
Melissa Tuckey lives in Ithaca, New York. She is author of Tenuous Chapel and Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. She’s a former Poet Laureate of Tompkins County and an emeritus fellow at Black Earth Institute. When not writing or teaching, she can be found hiking, doing yoga, or in the garden.
Art: Submerging with Amanita Muscaria by Kat Cervantes