“Never Run from Anything Immortal” by Sherry Chandler

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(a collage poem)

Without its aboriginal heritage,
America was only a more vulgar England.
— Jill Lepore

The moon has not been bad of late,
but the buckwheat has put the hives all out of temper.
Their tormenting harmonies sweep round my head.
They buzz like critics of God or a race doomed
by the forces of progress to be transformed
into a stage prop (to shed a single tear
for the ecologists) or a side kick. “Gittum up,
Scout.” The clapping hands seem to simmer
like a kettle of sugared blackberries thickening
into jam. Someone hung the apparatus
out to beg. I know it’s so. It was published
in a magazine, the one that said blackberries
are the crop of the future. I walk among their dark canes,
my skin freckled white as whole rye flour. I pause
to consider how much I love them — I find
an egg timer an invaluable tool for these occasions.
The silence is broken, but it’s only the mockingbird,
that poet among the birds. I am tired of the curious
little eyes that take it all in. How many eyes do bees have?
“We are no more, yet we are forever.”
The end. Slow curtain.
“Whaddya mean we, kemo sabe?”

-Sherry Chandler

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