It's Still Life

a journal

The last turning: Through pine and barley, poppy and mustard, this final poem in the series carries the road home.

Landscape’s Own Language

Pine. Beech. Birch.
Wildflowers in the verge.
Barley. Rye.
Steel-brushed sky.

We drive south —
cut Denmark’s corner
where war once raged
and poppies bloomed
from hell’s ledger —
their red a reckoning.

Tyres tear through Germany.
The flat-six hums a taut song.
Cello-strong.
We root to the road,
mycorrhizal
with velocity.

Once, a dog
kept my sanity,
anchored my drift —
her name is now
a fossil in my ribs.

Love, you see, is a permanent stain, not a switch.

Liver (a brief interlude)
Hated.
Hates.
Will hate.
The one constant even eternity won’t soften.

My clockwork elegy
to its tall clover-green case,
red poppy base —
Inside: symbols and syllables.
Rosemary scroll:
Remember. Remember.
(as if I could forget the hour of her hands.)

Morning breeze.
Sun on cheekbones.
Heat held in soil.
I inhale the catechism
of leaf and light.

Barley ripe and dry.
Air blue with smoke.
Fields cleared,
but not the mustard.

It’s gospel yellow beyond seeing,
seed hot as a psalm—
Fever-breaker. Blood-warmer.

Grandmother’s voice lodged in the stalks:
What I stole from the earth,
I give to you.

The Inheritance —
No scrolls.
No ledgers.
Just the unwritten between us,
thicker than blood,
lighter than mustard seeds
caught in the wind.

The End

Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2025.

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