Today we are delighted to share with you a poetic triptych, by Christine Butterworth-McDermott, which plays with the imagery and characters of AT720 The Juniper Tree, best known in the version collected and published by the Grimm brothers. The poems are, the poet tells us, ‘an attempt to discuss healing after an act of female betrayal’.
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Juniper, also known as the lady of heaven
Let me lie down and put my cheek upon your roots.
Hold me like a mother.
Shelter me from my enemy’s pursuit
and curse those who would cut me down.
Shield me under the boughs heavy with berries
the color of blue-black clouds.
I shall gather them for steeping
in this, my Winter—
crisp yellow juice smells of pine made poultice.
My hands feel cold and useless.
Rose red drops of my blood are in the snow.
Let me chant arkéo, arkéo.
Let my suffering be sufficient.
I call upon you mothergoddessghost,
Lady of Heaven, offer up your wood
for smoke, purify me through and through.
I beg. Please. Let my healing thaw the ground
beneath my feet. Dear mother, hold my tears
like a vessel that will one day
offer to water my renewal.
I Tell Marlene about Alice Hoffman
for Linda
After the disaster, Marlene takes my bones
& wraps them in a velvet
I did not know existed,
embroidered with stars, poetry, white
wine, late lunches by brick walls
until I remember a book
I read a long time ago in which
a woman who thought she was ice
lost the color red
One day, she was healed by another’s
understanding & a thousand butterflies
migrating across California.
When I tell Marlene I don’t think
I’ll ever feel safe again, she tells me
that I’m like the Ice Queen,
I’ll see red threaded through my future.
She says I will shake off the robe
of despair I’ve been wearing.
It’s not yours, she says. You didn’t
deserve this. You didn’t deserve this.
You didn’t deserve this, she whispers
until I start to believe it, until l start
to see red & rose & crimson,
until I thaw, rustle, spread wings.
Red bird rebirth
After hot betrayal, I touch nothing. I fold into the self—white erasure after white erasure—until everything becomes shell and shell becomes egg. There I rest, spinning within the small oval sphere of the wounding. What now? I wait. I burn. Rage is awful but better than songs of sorrow. I caw. Loud. Slowly my feet talon, my mouth beaks, and at first I think, I will turn these sharp tools on myself. Then, the back trembles, breaks open, the apparatus for flight taut, coated with the whisper of down, feathers sprout and rustle, expand from the tethers. I search for new beginnings, some small cure. I know these new feathers are red, that I am no longer ash inside enclosure. Wings crack what has been holding me tight and careful. This house has served its purpose. I gather fire, flame. I rise beyond Icarus, I praise the sun. I surface the air’s current until I burst around the burnt mountain—exuberant, soaring unextinguished. I slipstream clouds across the parched landscape to see the roaring river. Say goodbye to what never was, living through another dying cycle, I revive myself into miracle.
Images: various details from Plate 74 of John Audubon’s Birds of America, first published/printed between 1827 and 1838. Plate 74 provides various images of the Indigo bird (Fringilla cyanea), including a male, female, and juvenile.
Christine Butterworth-McDermott is the author of three poetry collections, the latest of which is The spellbook of fruit and flowers. Her poetry and fiction has been published in Alaska quarterly review, Lunch ticket, Massachusetts review, River Styx, and Southeast review among others. She lives in Texas with her husband, John A McDermott, and their daughter.
Just wonderful!