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Pruning Burning Bushes
Poems by Sarah M. Wells
Pruning Burning Bushes
Copyright © 2012 Sarah M. Wells. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf & Stock, 199 W. 8th Ave., Eugene, OR 97401.
Wipf & Stock
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
isbn 13: 978-1-62032-330-4
eisbn 13: 978-1-63087-913-6
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgment to the following journals where these poems, sometimes in earlier versions, first appeared:
Alimentum, “My Mother’s Kitchen”
Ascent, “Cascade Valley”
Christianity & Literature, “Dent de Lion” and “A Christmas Poem”
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), “Hymn of Skin”
Literary Mama, “The ladies’ quilting club is out today,”
Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry, “Sifted As Wheat”
The New Formalist, “Singing Birds”
New Ohio Review, “Making the Bed”
Nimrod: International Journal of Prose and Poetry, “Interference” and “Rain Dance”
Poetry East, “Casa Blanca Lily”
Poetry for the Masses, “Junction”
r.kv.r.y, “Daylily”
Relief: A Christian Literary Expression, “Pruning Burning Bushes”
Rock & Sling, “Honky-Tonk Bride”
The Table (Ashland Theological Seminary newsletter), “Thunder”
Windhover: A Journal of Christian Literature, “Angry”
“Angry,” previously titled, “The Angry Gardener,” received honorable mention in the Akron Art Museum’s New Words 2009 Poetry Contest.
Several poems included in this manuscript were originally published in a limited-edition chapbook, Acquiesce, published by Finishing Line Press in March, 2009.
“Nothing is yet in its true form.”
—C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
for Brandon
and for Lydia, Elvis, and Henry
Cascade Valley
Look, my daughter, the pine tree
dropped its seeds, and here
a fragile sapling braves the forest floor.
This used to be a birch tree
but lightning sliced it, wind heaved
its heavy breath and now
the trunk is rust. Sticks once flared
skirts of springtime buds,
but now we throw the broken limbs
into rushing floodwaters
to see how quickly we could be carried
away. Always a hair too close
to the edge, pebbles skitter
into the river. Let’s find our way
back from this spring rage, out of the valley
that catches what used to cling
above. Climb this mountain
with its tread marks, hoof prints,
decomposing oaks—we are not the first
to grow and fall. But see the way
the leaves return to earth, the way the dust
collects? Crocus blades emerge
from crumbling stumps as if this growth
does not take more than soil,
light, and rain. Reach down, my child,
bring a pine cone home to show
how miraculously we are carried.
I. Excavating
Angry
“He cuts off every branch in me
that bears no fruit. . .”
—John 15:2
The angry gardener sees
overgrown, untended beds
and seethes. He pulls
the waist-high weeds,
heavy in seed, and heaves
them to the compost heap.
And then the shrubs—
how they shudder
in his shadow, hand saw
pushed and pulled until
limbs quiver, surrender.
Pruners snip, his grip
is sweaty, tight, a frenzy
to the suckers, rose hips,
broken stems, spotted leaves.
The clipping never ends;
he is severe—takes away
more than one-third.
And then mulch,
fertilizer,
