Poetry By Jenna
blueberry season
In memoriam: Jack White Goose Flying, 1898
before the road came
a hasty grave buckthorn marker
one less boy going north come spring
inured to the residential school
its polymorphous Christ
in the basin of June heat his family
read the cracked pan of floodplain
took their remaining children
turned home
the grave accreted
in the way of recondite things
a picket fence whitewashed
some sort of story
all of it eventually
hamstrung by highway
the school down to fragments his bones
sharp and thin
as serried wheat
and come summer the blueberry bushes
a density of fresh red canes
as after flooding
or a deeprooted burn
(From Aphelion)
© Jenna Butler