White Birch
I'd forgotten how the curled bark blushes pink sometimes,out of dampness I suppose, or a new angle of light.A kind of blossoming, like spring come early to these woods.It is the salmon-petalled poppy I dug from my husband'sgrandmother's garden after her death. Dirt rainedthrough my hands, exposing the severed root. I thoughtI'd killed it. But all these years it keeps coming back:mouthful of sunrise, crinkled crepe tongues. The flushof my daughter's cheeks as she sits in the bath weeping,steam rising off the pale buds of her breasts,her hands cupped like leaves beneath her nose to catchthe bleeding. Rosettes blooming in the milky waterall around her. It is the sudden tree of herstanding beside me as I guide her from the tub,the white towel I dry her legs with and drapeover her back to brush her hair. She lets me brush her hair.It is the stained tissue I peel from her wet face becauseshe lets me. Pressing a fresh one there, I think of the bloodthat's yet to come, her other flowering, wonderingif she'll need me then. It is the color of her needing me.
Feature Date
- February 25, 2020
Series
Selected By
Share This Poem
Print This Poem
Copyright © 2019 by Patty Crane
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Patty Crane’s book-length poem, something flown, was winner of the 2017 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award. Her poetry and her translations of Swedish Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer have appeared in numerous journals, including Bellevue Literary Review, Verse Daily, West Branch, American Poetry Review, Blackbird, and The New York Times. Bright Scythe, a bilingual volume of her translations, was published by Sarabande Books in 2015. A third generation Cape Cod native, she divides her time between the hill towns of western Massachusetts and the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.
"The poems in Bell I Wake To create a sacred space honoring seasons, generations, the body, and every living creature the poet comes across. Patty Crane writes with the kind of attention Simone Weil says is close to prayer, and indeed under her gaze everything is blessedly alive with song and shimmer, present in its leafing out and its leaving. Her supple language can transform a white birch into a mouthful of sunrise and then to the flush on a young girl’s cheek. 'My subject is surprise,' the poet says, the kind of surprise that comes from precise seeing, vivid language and the sly humor of one who knows how quickly the ordinary can turn and amaze. This is a beautiful book, a crucial presence in our scattered world."
—Betsy Sholl, author of House of Sparrows: New and Selected Poems
"The intimate and exquisite exactitude with which Patty Crane meets the natural world is remarkable. Bell I Wake To brims with keen-eyed, tender noticing—bats are 'tin origami,' the snake her spade delivers is 'a length of slow-moving muscle,' and finches are 'singing wanting.' Our pleasure is further deepened by how fluidly outer and inner worlds spill into one another, as when a flower’s blush of color brings back 'the flush / of a daughter’s cheeks as she sits in the bath weeping' or 'the sudden tree of her / standing beside me.' This book is calibrated to be quietly piercing."
—Ellen Doré Watson, author of pray me stay eager
Poetry Daily Depends on You
With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.
