Mulberries

She sees the barn, the mulberry tree, the cat,
walks down to the creek, writes what she sees,
writes, she says, in grief, says so far much of what
she has written this morning is, her word, drivel.

Drivel. The word jumps hopscotch in my head, keeps
my pen poised near my still blank page. I believe
among her words, maybe among mine, the possibility
of play. Drive already in the soil of her word.

A word, even an unpromising one, may be
a seed. Some of us see the barn, the mulberry
tree, the cat and don’t see them. They stand,
they shed berries, they rub against your legs.
No wonder in that. And yet,  
         
yet, though word-deprived, beyond the present grief
I believe under foot like fallen mulberries, drive
words take root here near the barn, there near
the wood-fired kiln built into the hill, or
in the woods, ripe, and waiting to be pulled up
from the damp soil along Scuppernong Creek.

Margaret Rozga served as the 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate and the 2021 inaugural artist/scholar in residence at the UW Milwaukee at Waukesha Field Station. She continues to host weekly Write-Ins at the Field Station. Her book of Field Station inspired poems, Restoring Prairie, is scheduled for September 2024 publication by Cornerstone Press.