FEATURED: Flesh and Bones and Branches
by Riley Morsman
FLESH AND BONES AND BRANCHES
“There is pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.”
– Lord Byron*
Since singers could sing, we’ve sung
about trees. We praise their reaching
branches, delight in their flickering
leaves. Is there a soul who doesn’t
know about the shade of green
when the sun glows behind
the sycamore just right?
Is there anyone who wouldn’t
run their fingertips down
the rough rivers of a tree trunk
if given the proximity? Sugar
maples and walnuts and sycamores
and Scotch pines and pin oaks and
purple-leaf plums and elms—
My God, isn’t it beautiful?
And these bodies—the ones
that see the green and climb
the branches and smell
when spring is near—
are their songs sung too?
Praise be to the bones
we cannot see. Praise be
to the flesh that is flecked
and flaking. The stroke
of dirt in the dip behind
the ear. The bark-brown
hair stained by starlight
at the temples. The laughing
and bending and blinking
and weeping and sleeping
and burning and bruising and
walking and wandering and
grinning and kissing and
breathing and dreaming
and singing—My God,
isn’t it beautiful too?
There is pleasure and there is
rapture and there is music and
and there is love and all of it
is deep, deep, deep.
Separate wheat from chaff,
but toss this world skyward,
and all of it will fall
hard at your feet.
So come here for a moment—
crouch here with me and look
—watch our veins twist like
treetops, feel our voices
thrum like wingbeats. Hold
your breath, and you’ll hear
the crickets in our elbow crooks.
Lift morning fog to your lips
and drink it slowly, but wait
for me before you do. We’ll press
our ears against the ground
and listen to the chorus of fungus
and fleabane and fire and foxes
and falcons and flesh.
What is poetry if it isn’t
black storm clouds rolling,
growling from our lips?
Don’t you see? It is not good
for the man to be alone.
And my God—this world.
We’re beautiful.
*Epigraph is lines 1594-1598 from Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, “Canto IV.”
RILEY MORSMAN
Riley Morsman is a graduate of the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment at Iowa State University. She writes creative nonfiction, poetry, and inter-genre work, which has been published in Fathom Magazine, Callas Press Literary Journal, Barren Magazine, and Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, among others. Riley currently resides in the Kansas City area with her husband and two sons. When she isn't writing, reading, or cleaning up the Hot Wheels (again), you'll find her doodling in the margins of her journals, planting new prairie perennials in her garden, hunting for treasures in local thrift stores, and putting too much honey in her tea.