Nancy Devine
Branch
My problem is imagining what it would be like to have a bipedal
hominid and a chimpanzee viewing each other as appropriate mates.
--Harvard biological anthropology professor Daniel Lieberman, 2006
Early woman let her shoulders droop,
her knuckles drag to write,
“I need you,” in dirt,
“I want you,” in the mud.
As though reading this near its feet,
the forest, like a parent,
urged him toward her
with its gentle limbs,
offered the discretion of its boughs.
So he stood upright, like a Cypress,
and held her in his arms,
dark as some first millennium
when the moon was a pebble
descending the sky’s throat.
Then hip to hip,
eyes open, cheek soft as leaf on chin,
their calls filled the heads of trees,
green-tipped dendrites sending thought
across arboreal minds.
Consider the branches it would take
to reach them:
to touch the soft bark
of our young shoulders.
Nancy Devine teaches school English in Grand Forks, North Dakota, where she lives with her
husband, Chuck, and their two dogs, Whitey and Yo-yo. She co-directs the Red River Valley
Writing Project, a local site of the National Writing Project. Her poems, short fiction, and non-
fiction have appeared in online and print journals. In 2007, she was twice nominated for a
Pushcart Prize.
Home
Issue Two
Branch
My problem is imagining what it would be like to have a bipedal
hominid and a chimpanzee viewing each other as appropriate mates.
--Harvard biological anthropology professor Daniel Lieberman, 2006
Early woman let her shoulders droop,
her knuckles drag to write,
“I need you,” in dirt,
“I want you,” in the mud.
As though reading this near its feet,
the forest, like a parent,
urged him toward her
with its gentle limbs,
offered the discretion of its boughs.
So he stood upright, like a Cypress,
and held her in his arms,
dark as some first millennium
when the moon was a pebble
descending the sky’s throat.
Then hip to hip,
eyes open, cheek soft as leaf on chin,
their calls filled the heads of trees,
green-tipped dendrites sending thought
across arboreal minds.
Consider the branches it would take
to reach them:
to touch the soft bark
of our young shoulders.
Nancy Devine teaches school English in Grand Forks, North Dakota, where she lives with her
husband, Chuck, and their two dogs, Whitey and Yo-yo. She co-directs the Red River Valley
Writing Project, a local site of the National Writing Project. Her poems, short fiction, and non-
fiction have appeared in online and print journals. In 2007, she was twice nominated for a
Pushcart Prize.
Home
Issue Two
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Chickenpinata
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| issue two |