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.