Here We Go Round

Cooperstown region: I shall be doing a talk/reading at the Christ Church parish hall on 7/14 at 12:15. Sponsored by Christ Church and Cooperstown IAM.

As you can tell from this image, "Here We Go Round" comes
from The Throne of Psyche (Mercer University Press, May 2011.)
Hardcover or paperback. Cover image by Clive Hicks-Jenkins.

Rumor has it that on some days you feel rather dull and lethargic, as if all of life were ordinary time (and never "jam today," you Carollians.) Here is a rather odd little poem, the sort that crops up on a hot day, guaranteed to make you feel that life must be stranger and more treacherous than it sometimes seems.

So, in case on this lovely summer day you need to remember and know that you have escaped some strangeness, some demonic hair-pulling, some terrible down-falling--



HERE WE GO ROUND

1.

Going around the mulberry bush
At six o’clock in morning hush,

Our feet were crushing the fallen fruit,
Our minds were dreaming of the root

That goes tap-tapping underground
With an uncanny, dreamy sound.

2.

Tiny mulberry demons clung
To undersides of leaf and stung

Our tender hands and yanked our hair
Until we circled in despair

And world seemed all confusion, all
One vertigo of endless fall.

3.

The mulberries tasted of rot—
No wonder. It was damp and hot,

We tumbled down into the ditch
Dug in fairy time by the Witch.

A little dirt makes ditch a mound:
So here ends the mulberry round.