Silviculture
Poetry by Becca Rae Rose
In April all the pinecones fall. If you hear a rattle,
run. Prepare for fire season.
Like a snake’s instrument inside its husk,
a stay clear shake as it bounces from branch
to branch, then crunch—velocity’s ability
to weight the lightest body. But not enough
substance to thud on impact, just this tremble
in its hull then still. You might think
she was seeding but you’d be mistaken.
A lodgepole is no dandelion—wind
may scatter but these seeds first need
flame. The thirty odd pinecones blown
by my doorstep await a blaze. No matter
if beside their scorch my home blooms
up to bare its bones, like a woman to a lover, knowing
no other fire. A cone obeys its blueprint, made
for this: wrapped tight in resin, like so many wings
pulled towards the body, for warmth, for winter.
Built for burning: a brittle bird guarding
her seeds, holding them tight to her wooden
heart, cradled in pulp & fiber,
wanting to be taken by extreme
heat: a martyr, a mother, craving the element
to break herbaceous scales—puff once
slender skin into so many openings:
seeds free to soil,
to sink and split,
to sprout. What do I protect
but these very words.
What do I pull close to cradle
in the canopy of my body,
what makings of a garden
do I hold in my blood,
waiting for a flame to free.
& before me:
what am I
but the seed
my mother burned
for
or a burl in her
knotted
hands.
run. Prepare for fire season.
Like a snake’s instrument inside its husk,
a stay clear shake as it bounces from branch
to branch, then crunch—velocity’s ability
to weight the lightest body. But not enough
substance to thud on impact, just this tremble
in its hull then still. You might think
she was seeding but you’d be mistaken.
A lodgepole is no dandelion—wind
may scatter but these seeds first need
flame. The thirty odd pinecones blown
by my doorstep await a blaze. No matter
if beside their scorch my home blooms
up to bare its bones, like a woman to a lover, knowing
no other fire. A cone obeys its blueprint, made
for this: wrapped tight in resin, like so many wings
pulled towards the body, for warmth, for winter.
Built for burning: a brittle bird guarding
her seeds, holding them tight to her wooden
heart, cradled in pulp & fiber,
wanting to be taken by extreme
heat: a martyr, a mother, craving the element
to break herbaceous scales—puff once
slender skin into so many openings:
seeds free to soil,
to sink and split,
to sprout. What do I protect
but these very words.
What do I pull close to cradle
in the canopy of my body,
what makings of a garden
do I hold in my blood,
waiting for a flame to free.
& before me:
what am I
but the seed
my mother burned
for
or a burl in her
knotted
hands.
About the writer
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Becca Rae Rose is a poet and cross-genre writer from Sisters, Oregon, a place whose many mountain roads and myriad animal bodies greatly inform her work, most of which has been written while driving Highway 20—poems shook loose by the sight of roadkill or the swerve of the car to avoid tumbleweeds. On this hometown road she discovers a microcosm of the greater systems that affect her own body, unraveling how gender, flesh and the contemporary political moment knot together. She is an Assistant Poetry Editor for Narrative Magazine and is currently pursuing her MFA in Cross-Genre Writing at University of California San Diego
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