Thrush Poetry Journal
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Maura High 
​

Stitchwork

Here’s greenbrier
            trailing
 
from branch to twig:
green thorn,
                        green stem,
                                                green leaves rising
 
alternate—taking turns
 
in sunflash and glow,
 
and like palms, reading
            the sky and being read;
 
at each leaf joint, a little
                        stem jog to the left,
            a little stem jog to the right;
 
green line binding
 
self to self,
and you can follow it
            down hunters’ trails and
tales,
            through pocosin,
 
            thickets of bay, briar, wax myrtle,
            bitter gallberry,
                        to the houses
and outhouses and trailers
            strung along the roads,
            the thin grass, the curtained windows




Maura High is Welsh by birth, but for years now has lived and worked and voted in North Carolina. Many of her poems draw on what she has learned working with The Nature Conservancy, especially with their prescribed burn crews in the Sandhills and coastal plain of the state. She has published in a number of print and online journals, including Tar River Poetry, New England Review, Southern Review, Red Fez, Rhino, 2RiverView, and Canary. Her chapbook, The Garden of Persuasions, won the Jacar Press Chapbook Prize in 2013.




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