Cheryl Hyde Lewis

Were I a tree, my cambial body ringed with drought and plenty, feather-flicked and licked with cloud sweat, I’d want a bloom of lichen at my base, a nodding acquaintance with wind, the violet flight of bird wing shadowed in my hair. Leaves veined like laundered linen, sleeves of clustered fruit, the heft and height of hardwoods proof—every toughened fiber bends, declares a firm intent.

About midday I reach sun glut, one foot in the shadows, one in the light. The day’s a hollow burning at my back and flannel fastened against burdock burrs intensifies the itch.

I risk the deeper shaded thorns bringing blood with berry stains and see my grandmother 40 years ago, her hat the color of water after rain.

She recites field flowers— chicory, purple ironweed, wild bergamot for fevers, lamb’s ear, pale pink soapwort—as she points the highest fruit I might not see and some beyond my reach.

On a shelf at home I have a book; pea-sized crusts of sugar still linger on the lines. Her penciled measures loop like mine and bring me back to berries in my hand. When winter whittles daylight down it’ll surely seem worthwhile to recoup a teacup’s worth of summer with licks of beaten cream.

Pearson Scott Foresman

Ashley Garvick

Cheryl Hyde Lewis is retired from Ohio University. Her work has appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Now and Then: The Appalachian Magazine, Astropoetica, Rock and Sling, Saw Palm, The Aurorean, Blue Collar Review, and The Healing Muse, among others.