Poems by Barbara Parchim
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Story in the Stone
by Barbara Parchim
From Canary Fall 2023
Barbara lives on a small farm of mixed forest, field, orchard and garden in the Illinois river watershed which feeds into the Wild and Scenic Rogue River and on to the ocean. Located in the Siskiyou mountains on ancestral land of the Takelma (Dakelma) who lived there until 1856, the 350-year-old white and black oaks, camassia (camas) fields and springs that provided forage, still remain.
clearing the channel downhill from the spring
I found the grinding stone
half buried in the bank -
small enough for a child’s lap
the depression, too shallow for grinding acorns,
wore a rime of color,
maybe a residue of manzanita berries, chokecherries
or camas roots mixed with deer fat
the stone left behind by the acorn people
when the strange travelers came
with their wagons and tired horses
their noise and their papers claiming the land
the stone left behind
near the carefully tended camas swale,
the plank house under sheltering alders,
the willow bundles still soaking in the creek
left behind
in the company of centuries-old oaks
still weighted with the year’s acorn harvest
heavy with promise
the acorn people thinking
maybe they could return
when the circle of seasons came around again
as it had always been
the stone sits in my flower bed now,
between the sage and roses
gathering sunlight and dust
and then moonlight and rain,
the rime darkening with moisture -
the sweet relief of water
in our exodus, whenever it comes,
our eviction will be of our own design -
the sum of our excesses and failures
left behind in the fire and ash,
while under the too too hot sun
the stone endures
© Barbara Parchim
The Verge
by Barbara Parchim
From Canary Fall 2023
between the clearcut and the creek
or the pasture and the pavement
lie unruly ribbons of land
bordered by a verge
a wild vestige - by design or accident –
harboring rusted hulks and plastic detritus
these forgotten spaces rich with life
of no particular use to anyone
where a seed falls at random and germinates
and no one notices or cares
the wren nests in a truck’s shell
and the banana slug humbly creates humus
when the farms lie idle, the cities abandoned,
and the highways are silent,
the verge holds the secret of returning -
nudges the land into reclamation
grass grows in the cracks in the asphalt,
a jigsaw puzzle of green and grey,
redwood and cedar sprout in the lumber yard
nourished by the sawdust of their ancestors
elk browse the last of summer’s roses
along the overgrown hedgerows
near the farm house moldering into the loam,
ivy overtaking the porch railings
as Charon collects the last of his silver coins
from the eyelids of humanity
a bear and her yearling cubs
loll in the window frames and doorways
blinking in the sun breaking through the fog
they breathe the new green quiet
as though they always have
and listen to the verge inching forward
© Barbara Parchim