Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 10,000 daily visitors and over 9,000 archived posts.
Mary B. Moore: Gloria, Arbored
Gloria would like to be
not-Amanda, but she needs
an outside to be inside.
Maybe Juno would
arbor her in the three-boled juniper
near the porch, or is it
already three sisters, braided?
Juniper means ever young,
though its bark, fissured
and grooved, scaled in spots,
looks ancient, saurian, piscine.
The foliage simmers or shivers,
airs itself out, and the round
leaf-scales, which join and branch,
make each stem a flat little tree:
a tree of trees.
Air breaches and touches
the juniper everywhere.
And in its blue-green torch shape,
narrowed at the top,
its foliage almost a spiral,
Gloria could feel
how ascending so far
is drinking air
is dwindling infinitely into it,
and thirst is rooting beneath.
But the red oak in the park would also
suit her. Four-boled, sororal,
the bark blushes dusk rose
or mauve where it’s furrowed.
Here she won’t dwindle
but spread, bare each wide
two-skinned leaf-self to air:
multitudes, skewed everywhichway,
so many selves,
tethered, still
sistered and mothered.
~~~~
Mary B. Moore’s collections of poetry include Dear If, Flicker and The Book of Snow. She and her husband, the philosopher John Vielkind, live in Huntington WV with Seamus Heaney, the cat.
Copyright 2025 Mary B. Moore. From Amanda Chimera: Poems by Mary B. Moore (Madville, 2025). Winner of the 2023 Arthur Smith Prize for Poetry.
Discover more from Vox Populi
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Wonderful poem from a wonderful book!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
It really is a great collection!
LikeLiked by 1 person
If you like this poem, I’d highly recommend the book Amanda Chimera from which it comes. It’s a spectacular book.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I agree! Amanda Chimera is a beautiful collection.
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
My comments sometimes don’t show so I’ll say here “Thanks to Laure-Ann and Jim, and to Michael for sharing this poem. Bless you all, say the junipers.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Thank YOU, Mary.
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, as an unpoetic aside: we Germans use juniper berries in Sauerkraut. I must ingredient.
LikeLiked by 2 people
My wife is German, so I’m very familiar with German cooking, although we’ve had to adapt it to vegan.
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
A beautiful POEM!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks Rosemary!
LikeLiked by 1 person
A poem of poems — just like the ‘tree of trees”!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks oh poet of poets!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks oh poet of poets!
LikeLiked by 1 person
This well-tended poem seems grafted from experience.
(I too have a juniper growing beside my porch; in lucky years the cedar waxwings show up in a small flock to gorge on the berries, a tonic for their long flights to come. It’s a marvel of a tree, and has kept its place now for forty years. But never been written about. In drought years, the needles die off near the trunk, but the juniper keeps generating longevity at its extremities)
Thanks for the poem. It intrigues.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, I love my porch junipers and write about all the time. Thanks for your comment!
LikeLike