At free, they’re cheapand sweet enough, and, by late July,the tree’s glad to shed them. Out thereunder the storm clouds,a slender woman reachesinto the plunging branches.She’s bridling the great green horsein the summer pasture. She takesa heavy bough in her armsand feels it lift her off her feet.She brought a dented pailbut eats as she picks, and around herfalls a shower of mulberriesfrom the treetop filled with starlingsas, weighted with fruitthe whole tree staggers.Then the first raindrops tickamong the leaves. Hurry now.
Mulberries in the Park
Connie Wanek
Feature Date
- July 16, 2023
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“Mulberries in the Park” from TREE LINES: by Connie Wanek.
Published by Grayson Books on April 22, 2022.
Copyright © 2022 by Connie Wanek.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Connie Wanek was born in Wisconsin, raised in New Mexico, and lived for over a quarter century in Duluth, MN. She is the author of seven books, including Rival Gardens: New and Selected Poems from University of Nebraska Press. In 2022 a book of poems for younger readers, co-authored with Ted Kooser, was published by Candlewick Books. Wanek’s poems have appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and many other publications over the years. She was named a Witter Bynner Fellow of the Library of Congress, and also received the George Morrison Artist of the Year Award. In 2017, a wildflower trail in Duluth’s Hartley Nature Center was named in her honor.
West Hartford, Connecticut
The poems in this beautiful anthology consider trees in various seasons, landscapes and time periods. These poems recognize our spiritual, psychological, and physical need for trees. With climate change looming as a crisis that affects the entire planet, this collection of stirring poems by some of the best poets writing in America today is an essential read.
"Tree Lines, a newly published anthology into which I'm currently dipping with great pleasure, trying to savor each poem without gulping, is a theme-based anthology (all poems about or featuring trees) whose contents are subdivided into thematic sections: 'Where You are Planted'; 'One Tree'; 'Calendar'; and 'Writing and telling.'...Tree Lines lets me hear a swelling chorus of voices at the same time as it allows close attention to single poems...Jennifer Barber, Jessica Greenbaum, and Fred Marchant have done a beautiful job with Tree Lines."
—Rachel Hadas, Los Angeles Review of Books
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