The Grapevine

It’s very easy
with forty dollar clippers
to sever your roots
from years of sprawling, fruiting industry,
easy for the muscles of my hand
but anguish to the muscle of my heart.
Yet my hand works faster,
responds first to thinking
too late to feeling
saves itself a thousand clips
by making just this big one.
My life has become too busy
to tend a wild garden.
The chill creeps in
through my fingertips
when I learn from myself
why my town looks the way it does.

Cry Me a River

Cry me a river
Sing me a rainbow
Dream me a mountain
Ache me a canyon
Breathe me a cloud
Gift me some sky
And when the stars come out
I will tell them
I saw them watching too,
The insistent crash of landscapes
Where Earth slowly ages
In the ancient youth
Of a galaxy.

Like the birds,
we are here to make music
that rings off the rock
while in the ocean
singing knows no bounds.

Jenny McBride's writing has appeared in SLAB, Sou'wester, Common Ground Review, Streetwise, The California Quarterly, The Fiction Pool, and other publications. She makes her home in the rainforest of southeast Alaska.