A journal of art + literature engaging with nature, culture, the environment & ecology

The Yield

Jake Goldwasser, Brooklyn, New York, USA

 

The land will yield ragwort and bluebells and brambles

without intervention. Leaves that taste

like sour apples, tufts that sheep can eat,

and huge clouds of fruit flies and midges.

A little effort and the land will yield

leeks and radishes and tarragon. Neat rows

of sprouts will greet your afternoons. Tilth

and sunlight and rain. The land will yield

to the intentions of careful hands.

Here is an example:

                                    border collies stay low

to the land and shepherd with their eyes.

Welsh collies are distinguished only by their actions.

They make rounds and hike tails high

to make their outlines known in tall scrubland.

They raise themselves like hands. The land will be

unyielding. It will carve grooves in your shins with

shark teeth that go loose. It will pool and suck at your ankles

underground. Your toes will mingle with rhizomes

and mushrooms. Keep your nose as low as a hound’s—

the ground will yield a foothold for the heels

you sink toward a first step forward, down; will yield

rags and stories; with the right girding will yield

croaks and crickets, elms and oaks and hazels;

the magenta dye of beetroots on a plate,

the leatherworker's tanned hide of your feet.


 

 

 

Jake Goldwasser is a linguist, cartoonist, and poet based in Brooklyn. His work can be found in The New Yorker, The Spectacle, Homonym, Queen Mob's Teahouse, Revue Pøst, The Bookends Review, and forthcoming in The Meadow. He is interested in poetry that explores uncertainty in humans’ relationships with language, the environment, and the future.

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