Jaggers, Trish Lindsey

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Western Kentucky UniversityTopSCHOLAR®Academic Support Division Faculty Publications Academic Support Division4-1-2008BareTrish Lindsey JaggersWestern Kentucky University, trish.jaggers@wku.eduFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/bgcc_acad_supp_div_fac_pubPart of the Creative Writing CommonsThis Poem is brought to you for free and open access by TopSCHOLAR®. It has been accepted for inclusion in Academic Support Division FacultyPublications by an authorized administrator of TopSCHOLAR®. For more information, please contact todd.seguin@wku.edu.Recommended Repository CitationJaggers, Trish Lindsey, "Bare" (2008). Academic Support Division Faculty Publications. Paper 5.http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/bgcc_acad_supp_div_fac_pub/5Bare  I. Daddy knew naked trees intimately by their skin against his fingers; he knew secrets of bark that his father once whispered. I want bared intimacy with winter.  II. A ring around a winter moon means snow in a day or so. Ever heard that? Count the stars caught inside the ring for the number of days the snow will last. Maybe it won’t even snow; perhaps it’s just a celestial bowl of moon soup peppered with stars.  If you put a hair from a horse’s tail in water, it’ll make a snake. Ever heard that one? Neither did the horse I tried it on, and she wouldn’t listen to reason when I tried to tell her that old sayings hold fresh truths.  Old truths belong in your deepest pocket, and just because someone accidentally told you the truth you subscribe to does not make you squint at bright or turn your back to the sun or lift your feet while swinging.  III. Rivers can’t run backwards, unless, of course, a major earthquake rings the church bells in Boston like one did in 1811 when life turned on a simple axle— flat, edgeless; nothing fell, so no one got crushed; now we rotate, rise like comets until our air gets too thin, then we pretend as though we lived on CO2 all along, act stunned if we fall, as though we didn’t think we could, as though no one ever has.  IV. No, old truths won’t sue or harass you to tell your story until you run from them, twist and stomp through waist-high grasses where woods used to be, hide face-down beside your flattened path; so easy to just lie—  or be placed—  remain where the road crawls to the left and the view kneels on the right, with mountains behind clouds burst with sun; just sunstreams, no voice like in the movies but you have stories; words arc inside the uncracked you, sparks within geodes. Touch your pocket for proof.  Did you know that geodes grow from the outside in? Hollow rooms of crystalline walls do not insist that all space be filled. We grow like geodes, if we’re lucky. And if we’re not, we grow filled with dried mud and grey clay, without round stones in our pockets or green leaves in our hands.  V. We don’t know trees without their clothes on, in the winter, when touch turns our fingers blue, the color of numb. We search for identities that the wind shed in a serrated-edged heap at our feet, pick through jagged crimsons, saffrons, ochers, coppers, maroons, chestnuts, hennas, ambers, and umbers, look for perfect; press their swells and veins between pages of a hand-me-down book; both crumble with age, turn the color of cardboard; blame the glue, the paper, the leaf; start over. New year, new clothes, new resolutions to do it right this time. We mean well.  VI. Never thank anyone for flowers; the flowers won’t live if you do. Ever heard that one? Flowers belong to no one, I’m told. Every flower I’ve transplanted from tight plastic sleeves seemed grateful for air but wilted for water. True, flowers don’t belong to me; they belong to water.  VII. Sweet gum makes the best whistles. I don’t know sweet gum in winter, and I forgot how to make whistles. I want to know sycamore by more than height, sumac by more than red-rung ladder leaves, scarlet maple by more than blood veining; sassafras and teaberry ache to burst the red buds swelled on the back of a pink tongue, spray a dry mouth; cedar’s spice preserves warped chests  filled with paper dust, makes fenceposts—  crooked, like tired farm hands—  outlast the shade of birches. Trees bleed when cut; cedar blood never clots.  VIII. I once found a pod-like cocoon; black and ridged, like it belonged to the belly of a large cockroach; I put it in a jar. Weeks later, I checked it; a bittersweet-crimson moth, the irises of a god’s eyes in its wings, lay dead at the bottom of the air-tight jar.  IX. Don’t worry; you’re alone now. They never read past the moth; moths eat spaces in the winter clothes they make, leave us bare.  X. Last spring, the two-hundred acre farm up the road auctioned as “parcels” of one acre each; now, crisp, young houses sprout; bare-naked saplings—greenhouse grown—  supplant fully-clothed trees. I walked through winters’ wind-strewn garments there, hunted mistletoe among branches of one-hundred- years-old oak and elm. Mistletoe is a parasitic plant that wants to evict the host that entertains it; life is the rent a tree pays.  XI. Ever heard that a whirlwind in summer means dry weather? Leaves dance to wind instruments, broken sound through trees, and they leap, spin, and fall like drunken ballerinas. Not many leaves blow into my yard these days; and the ones that do splatter the yard with accidental color like smocks of four-year-olds with jars of fingerpaint. My leaves blow into a neighbor’s yard where I get blamed for the mess. From up the street, a white whirlwind spins foam cups, gum wrappers, and straw papers then dies at the foot of my silver poplar. Squirrels walk electric tightropes.  XII. You ever hear that a sundog is a sign of foul weather? a rainbow’s promise of lightning, rain, hail, and strong winds? Red sky in the morning and a sundog in the evening of the same day means “nature is seething.” I saw two last week.  XIII. You know a good man by how many animals he loves. A man who loves cats will adore his wife. Have you heard that one? Nature knows our intentions are good, believes in our faithfulness; that’s why she hides cyanide in peach seeds.  XIV. Hairs from horses’ tails do not make snakes; you can prove that. But if you can prove that you know heat from the inside out— the way blisters hold liquid fire from the sun—  as payment, I’ll give you three peaches a week.   Trish Lindsey Jaggers 

Bare

http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=bgcc_acad_supp_div_fac_pub

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