Anne Marie Macari is the author of four books of poetry, including Red Deer (Persea Books, 2015) and She Heads Into the Wilderness (Autumn House, 2008). In 2000 Macari won the APR/Honickman first book prize for Ivory Cradle. She has also coedited, with Carey Salerno, Lit From Inside: 40 Years of Poetry From Alice James Books. ---------
Where is the Gem?
Who knows red
or cobalt
or the minerals
in my head
emerald stain
of hummingbird
purple tinge
of dread?
Where is the gem
that was promised?
Crystal in silt and clay
or the spark in
the tree as I come close
and it reaches
then bends away
My red tree didn’t
ask to bloom, didn’t
pray not to shrink
in the cold, the gem
of its veins runs
wild through its tips
ruby through its tips
it touches me
then pulls away
Yielding and Simple
Don’t go down into heaven, don’t go down
to heaven’s woods, where
deer lead the way into circles
of birch, through circles and shadows, too fast
to follow Linger where decay
opens to our steps, where we cleanse ourselves
with dead leaves Could I ever
be yielding and simple? Yielding
and simple again? Different than
before? O dear one, don’t go down
to heaven while I’m still learning Spiral
forest, no path through the brush
Heaven’s in the voices, quick through
the branches, voices yielding,
simple, through circles of birch
We Will All Go Home With You
As a child, picking through
blackberry thickets,
through underbrush
and thorns, I thought
we were all together,
but you weren’t born
I filled a pail
with fruit, scratched
my arms in that dense
and stopped to place
a black orb
on my tongue Far into time,
my mouth like a place
of sight, and a purple-
black unrolling inside—
I heard the only door
while trees leaned overhead
We will all
go home with you, through
brambles and weeds
That is what they said