A poem by Jean Buehler
Exuviae
Pines. Sugar pines
and their massive cones that,
robbed, become altarpieces.
Magnificent, spellbinding
gonads. The pine nuts shake
in the wind. Pine nuts shake
into a cup, salt, cayenne, to be
eaten, ground into molar
grooves and returned to pulp.
Tents zipped, bodies sheathed,
humans laying in rows
just a layer apart from stars.
Just a layer or two, when
counting cataracts, or downcast
gazes, or sleep. They love
each other. They love
the ground pushing on
their backs through
the nylon membranes. The ferns
that cloak the ground like grass.
The ferns curl at the tips
and look like fossil
ammonite shells. They’re called
fiddleheads, the spiral tips of ferns,
and you can eat them
if you catch them
before they unfurl into the sun
and shed the helix of youth.
The gyre, the gyre,
the sea-within-the-sea,
they can see bands of the Milky Way
they can see the Sargasso churning
they can see the thin veins
within their eyelids.
The clacking of their teeth sounds like
the wind-crackling shell of a cicada,
torpid, blowing, dispossessed.
Jean Buehler is a writer and student from Texas currently based in southern Minnesota. When she is not writing, she is usually busy reading, running, painting, playing board games, or trying to have as many experiences as humanly possible (to have more things to write about).