Here is the final preview of Screefing: A Tree-Planter's Reflection, which I am planning to release in a few days. Like the last preview, this one is a sequence including both poetry and short prose. I hope you enjoy it.

Stopped

When motion leaves,

you stand stolen, swept

out of walking into slow air

that wraps you in perspiration

and blackflies, and thick water

that hasn’t moved since the god you deny

let it run off his muscled shoulders in the sweat

of violent creation.

You are alone and forgotten, forgetting

you are alone and hungry.

You are weak inside flesh made hard

by work, weak inside

a new and alien strength

that growls in your blood

with the echoes of something

lost. You

who came with seedlings and a shovel

to impregnate this moist land, you

who labour in straight lines, you

who curse rock and water, you

whose body aches in its tent at night,

nothing more than a tool—you want

to sink down. You want

the warmth of this swamp’s dark floor to close

around your hips, your chest. You want

the rotting place where larvae swarm

to fill your mouth and wrap your tongue

in a fertility too rich for speaking. You want

to go down

to where the bones are.

Stripped

Chuck’s mouth opens, and his lunch comes out. It splatters over a sun-heated rock on the slope beside the swamp, and steams. He looks up, peeling face brown and red, eyes slack, mouth slack, a string of mucus connecting him to the jutting granite, and wipes his chin on the bare skin of his forearm. He takes a step, another step, and passes me on the way up to where the others lie sprawled and staring, with Andy walking between them bringing water. All Chuck can see is the water jug. His head turns to watch it as he moves up the slash-littered hillside, unsteady between half-empty hip bags. When he gets close, his arms reach out like a character in a bad desert movie, but there are no words in his mouth, no “water, water, water.” He just stands there clasping the clear damp plastic as Andy helps him lift it to his lips and holds it for him as he drinks, every thin muscle shaking.

Slipping

This is no place to think about stars,

hills or trees, black bears, deer.

This is a body

place, a muscle

place—a place

where walking is

boots on broken wood, stone,

where walking is

breathing in time with the contraction

of hamstrings.

Here, you

are lungs and blood and hands,

dirt, sweat, knees,

and foul language—motion

in a place more alive

than your eyes in spring,

your good intentions,

could have guessed.

In this place of bruises

and flies, you straddle the weave

of time, place, and gainful employment,

and stare at the boots rotting

on your feet.