December 2019

Years when oak trees produce an abundance of acorns are known by foresters as “mast” years.  Here in New England, this has been such a year; and December’s poet, Jessica Bennett, invites us to embrace the mast year as a metaphor for the ebb and flow of life, for the annual accumulation of everyday joys and sorrows, much on our minds this last month of 2019.

Mast Year

 By Jessica Bennett

Just when we forgot to expect anything

of the old oak, it produced a bonanza of acorns –

abundance and unpredictability

being solid defense for a tree.

The field below this wintered oak

has now been thoroughly rummaged.

Caps strewn about in slush, their loot

drawn up into garrets, pulled deep

into the crumble of stonewalls.

Not long ago, I found a stash of acorns

in a Christmas stocking and because it’s hard

to be the cause of disappointment,

let alone starvation, I let them roll

free in the attic eaves.

It’s no longer my house, after all.

Rain seeps through the bruised roof

and the linoleum curls in the kitchen. 

This shelter has its own agreement

with gravity. Corners of hollow

rooms are softened by dust, the rub

and chew of critters. A bit of rot becomes

an entryway. A gutted pillow, a nest. 

Burdock and bluebottles tap windows

unseen. What’s in, or out

matters less. With death comes so much

opportunity.  Even this pile of seed stowed

in your boot will win another chance.   

Born and raised in Essex, Massachusetts, Jessica Warren Bennett is a grant writer and poet now living in New York.  A common thread throughout much of her work is the close observation of bugs and small creatures.  She has learned her craft through the community of writers at the Hudson Valley Writers Center in New York and The Frost Place in New Hampshire.  She is part of a dedicated group of volunteers involved in keeping the long running (50 years) and nationally recognized Katonah Poetry Series a vibrant program of the Katonah Village Library.