By JACQUELYN POPE
Girl when you get lost
the forest will find you
tame you take you over.
Pocket of breadcrumbs
and birdsong. Pocket of rocks.
The ends of town the noise
of home are lost
where you go digging down
and out and under
furrowed in mud and stone.
When you rise and run
remember the good black silt
of these good green days
tilt of this time beaten fast
then faster ground given shape
and shine its living part
where you bloom like a dare
worked out of the dark.
Jacquelyn Pope is the author of Watermark. Hungerpots, her translations of the Dutch poet Hester Knibbe, is forthcoming. She is the recipient of a 2015 NEA Translation Fellowship, a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant, and awards from the Academy of American Poets and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
