The Unspooling

When I was young, I had strange visions:

a crabapple tree, rotting from within, split open,

            a ribbon of locusts unspooling along the spoilt bark;

a girl with a red bonnet floating ten feet above the soil,

            sucking her knuckles;

the stream that rives the forest at the end of our field suddenly dry

            and my spectral ancestors parading along the streambed,

            their skin and hair the dark blue of the barn swallow.

But now I hold you, my son.

My visions spilled out with my seed

and your pale, gnarled form was borne of them.

***

Sarah Chappell is a legal aid attorney living in Oradell, New Jersey, with her husband and rambunctious cat. In her free time, she hikes and forages in local forests to seek inspiration for her poetry.