my words are few
under this greying sky,
wind tossing the trees
among clouds that smell of rain
while the goats stand by,
watching in a reverent silence
punctuated only by the drag of branch,
snap of twigs.
i had cut back the brambles yesterday –
cool under a distant blue sky,
picked my way
through the snagging thorns
hands careful as a bushbuck
in crack dry undergrowth.
clipping and pulling out
the jagged canes of new growth
that were closing the path,
revealing strangled branches
of anisodontea and leonotis beneath.
today – late afternoon
i gather the brushwood.
my hands snapping and
folding the small branches
into bundles of startwood
by muscle memory,
of lives and lives lived
on forests’ edge –
measuring the brush,
knowing strength of hand and stick,
gripping and folding
and snapping and folding again,
until days worth of bundles
rest on my hip as
i make my way home.
autumn has come,
the fires are lit.
