"Picking up Pinecones" by Mary Ruefle

PICKING UP PINECONES


I light a few candles, so

the moon is no longer alone.

My secret heart wakes

inside its draped cage

and cracks a song.

After a life of imagining,

I notice the ceiling.

It is painted blue

with a border of pinecones.

I’ve spent my life in a forest.

Picking up new things,

will it never end?



Source of the text - Mary Reufle, Trances of the Blast.  Seattle: Wave Books, 2013, p. 110.

TJB: Venus in fir. This ars poetica figures nature as artifice & pinecones as tiny poems hanging in the forest of life. Does she want it to end?