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Blackberries in Reed Grass
There is nothing we see here
That sees us back—
The wild lettuces, cottoned
And blown after three
Days, their fraction of
Forever briefly noted and
Filed away—a shadow
Thrown off by stones
Older than biology
And the kelp distributed
Across their flanks.
We understand but cannot say
What it was, what knowledge
It was, found in the proportion
Of that shadow, wherein
Each name contains
The memory of a clutch
Of features—how the
Trefoil leaves, folded
Down onto themselves,
Make woodsorrel, or
A staggering escape somehow
Produces the ghost crab.
The odd logic of color and shape
Of figure and ground
Is finally a concrete fact
Of sparks crackling in grey
Meat, from which the world
Emerges mushroom-like,
Black caps and brown dishes,
The concave faces uplifted
On slender stems.
With the
wild blackberries
Among the reed grasses.
Pantonality by Night
Night sounds trill
In the blackness beneath the spruces
Counting the infinity that intervenes
Between one and nothing.
We feel it in degrees
In the tone row resolving
Into a consonance that wasn’t
Intended, or in
The sway-backed willow
Casting shadows imperfectly
Over a pond sunk
In the dew-whitened grass.
We feel it in the way that
Each bodied thing
Recalls an idea, a shadow
Of thought, the dark
Bottom settling under
The foam-flecked surface.
Daniel Barbiero lives and works in the Washington DC
area. His recent work appears or is forthcoming in
Tamafhyr Mountain Irregular, Turbula, Ekphrasis,
Listening to Water: The Susquehanna Watershed
Anthology, Words-Myth, Ygdrasil and elsewhere. He is
also active on the local improvised music scene as a
double bassist.
Email: Daniel Barbiero
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