BERRY THICKET

by William M. Peaster

In the sunless labyrinth of the berry thicket,
ten thousand thorns did kiss my flesh.
I became stuck in their kisses,
stuck in their hands, never to be released
from their fingers again.

I became an old man in that sunlessness;
I forgot my fingers, my feet, the eyes of my face,
the road by which I had once arrived
and the berries for which I had once came.

I am now only a heaving chest
suspended in kisses, listening to the birds
who sing from beyond the thicket, breathing
like gods from soft throats, until one day

they, too, fall silent—
they, too.

[You can find "Berry Thicket" and 150 similar poems in my recently published volume of poems, Phantastikon].