Unpicking the print-eyed
berries
Unpicking the print-eyed berries from her hair
in a hollow where the spiders probe the moss:
watch her dog-face discreetly, forbidden nymph
and fungi angel of the spirit forests.
There's no critical moment; eyes averted,
the sky,
mauve, like a night-dress, she's unaware
of my groping. Sounding her voices in
the forest, she picks berries from the unkempt
bushes and shrubs, filling her skirts with
purple stains
and washing her flank with green-stained dew,
on the edge of mossy churchyards, purple stained
by nightfall. No critical moment, I move
closer, her skirts are shadows lifted, mauve
and stained by the sky, green stained legs stretch
for print-eyed berries in the shadow raising
night. Dog-faced she moans in the churchyard,
print-eyed berries fall from her full skirts
lifted
like shadows in the forest, reaching the roots
of lice pocked-trees, falling into water pots
within the trunk, mossed and full of sticky oils.
Purple tinted hair, she gathers berries, her
touch covering with a shadow consciousness;
her forest is stupified, levelled to a
deliberate throbbing and breath suspended.
Jowls stained by print-eyed berries, she's
unaware;
skirts held to her breast, her green calves are drained black;
like berries in preservative, she's pulped black;
berries picked to be picked in an unknown wood.
