from The Greenwood Speaks: Twelve Trees of Ogham

Ash

It’s said Yggdrasil –
from which the god Odin
hung nine long days,
 
while he absorbed
the secret lore
of those three worlds
it spanned, from roots
to topmost branch –
was an ash tree
 
just as it’s said
that ash invites
the illumination
of a lightning strike.
 
It’s said the seeds
are keys.
 
Pluck one –
find where it fits
in the wide trunk.
 

Kathryn Daszkiewicz

in collection Coldharbour, 2022, Shoestring Press, ISBN 978-1-9155531-5-7

 
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How the End Began

And afterwards her own house
felt strange. She slid the bolt
 
back, stepped outside. The trees
were not themselves. It was so cold
 
it didn’t thaw all day. Everything
in rime and nothing making sense
 
a world on hold. And footprints
that led back to what was home
 
and those he’d made
into beyond
 
subsumed in sheet ice.
 

Kathryn Daszkiewicz

in collection A Book of Follies, 2017, Shoestring Press, ISBN 978-1-9103238-9-2;
also published in The Frogmore Papers 88, Autumn 2016

 
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Snow, the First Time

Once green gave way to gold, and more light
was lost, by chance they came to what had been
the garden. It was so changed they did not
know the place. As the chill of night
crept forward and the leaves fell, trees
were no longer shelter. So they found a cave.
 
Under the constellation of the crab
he skinned a bear, using its claw to strip
the thick pelt clear. He’d come upon it lifeless.
(Before they fled, some animals had grown
fierce and dusk brought strange cries.)
 
None of the birds would touch the windfalls
from a tree that looked familiar. An acrid smoke
coiled from the apple wood as it refused
to flame. The cold unsheathed its claws.
They woke to an odd glare. Everything
was white. More feathers floated down.
 
The stream was silent. He slipped on the bank
and flung his arms out wide. And when he stood
they froze at the shape imprinted on the snow.
And stared, until a sharp wind drove them back.
 

Kathryn Daszkiewicz

in collection Taking Flight, 2012, Shoestring Press, ISBN 978-1-9073565-0-6

 
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Metempsychosis

     There is a tradition amongst seamen that the souls of old sailors
     after death, occupy the bodies of albatrosses … – EH Shackleton
 
On the day the cat licked its fur
against the grain
they knew a storm would come.
The ship’s bell clanged
with no man near.
Its slack rope swung
like a noose.
 
Offguard, he’d put his left foot
forward on the planks
that Friday they’d set sail,
when land had shrunk
to a speck in his eye
was gone.
 
His corpse
 
sewn into sailcloth
was weighed down
with stones it sank and sank.
 
His soul,
 
in shape much like the caul
he wasn’t born with,
slipped through the seams.
 
Unfurling in the murk
it slowly surfaced;
rolled round in foam
it passed from wave to wave.
 
Feathers
 
of spray caressed it.
The cold was a strange embrace
and when high winds made the sea surge
it was flexing spindrift wings.
 
They spread and spread
and the next squall launched it skyward
 
soaring, soaring.
 

Kathryn Daszkiewicz

in collection A Book of Follies, 2017, Shoestring Press, ISBN 978-1-9103238-9-2

 
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