January – A Poem by Mary Fontana
As some of you know, the final issue of my Woolgathering magazine featured poetry.
This beautiful and timely poem was written by my dear friend, Mary Fontana, whom I met while volunteering at Annunciation House (a couple of decades ago-yikes!)
Follow Mary on Instagram @maryfontanawrites as she embarks on a new writing project accounting the history of Annunciation House. Thanks Mary for being a part of this final issue, for being my friend, and for doing amazing, heartfelt work! Cheers to you!
January
By Mary Fontana
“Contrary to popular belief, tree roots do not penetrate deep into the soil…
In reality the overall shape of a tree will look like a wine glass.”
–Trees: An Illustrated Identifier and Encyclopedia,
by Russell and Cutler
The feasts are finished,
the bottles emptied. Every glass
in the vast cupboard of the boreal
forest shaken dry of its last crimson drop
and shut up on the shelf
of winter. Swells of bare branches
fill now only with sky, with mist,
the occasional ripple of a line of birds,
no crystal ringing in this austere season
unless an ice-storm
has blown through, filmed each form,
waking us in the night with the smash
of a weighted bough on tiles
of frozen snow. Improbably, below,
earthworms hold heat,
twined around roots no longer new,
roots that have halted their excavations
at the limit of that circle, invisible to them,
that the branches overhead inscribe in air.
How they speak, bowl to base, branch to root,
is a mystery, but that they speak is clear.
And we who have drunk deeply,
who have, it must be admitted,
a bit of a headache, a sore belly,
who are a touch burnt from the bonfires
of harvesttime, now curl up
like the earthworms,
swear off the season’s wild excesses.
It can be enough
in these dim days to slip
one’s arms around the fragile stem
of a tree, rest one’s cheek against
its coolness. We await a wine
no less golden than the sun
in its return, infinitesimal at first,
at which the sap will rise in empty pipes,
the boughs like cupped hands will brim
with fragrance and green flicker,
and birds will pour from the south to set
for spring the hemisphere’s wide tables.