Junction

     By Emma Miller

We agree to meet at the next junction, where junction exists.

    I will look at my trees and you yours.
    I will look at my feet and you yours.

    And I will try not to miss your walking company.

    But here I am walking,

    And I will relish in that home for a moment.

    I will look at my trees, my bark, my bugs;
    Smell my infinitesimal specks of dirt,
    My evergreen needles suspended;
    Feel my shoed feet fall and pick up along my path,
    Dirt be moved.

    And I will relish in that home for a moment.

    But we will reconvene and build a makeshift hearth.
    Perched on our crackling flame,
    We will tell each other all that we saw and felt,
    Thought and believed.

    And we will relish in that home for a moment.

    We will roost until the fire dies, the fuel spent.
    And then we will pack up in the morning,
    And part to collect more.

    We will agree to meet at the next junction, where junction exists.

But here I am walking,

Friendtending

The intimacy of grooming poppies in late fall
Sloughing away spring’s death to make room for second shoots

Gently,
Fingertips search for the ends of the old
To break them without damaging root,
Soft blue leaves bending in trust

This is what people grew up for.

To play with leaves,
Strands of living,
Like a friend’s hair

To brush the wild with softest touch
To braid wordlessly into one

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Emma Miller studies Physics and Comparative Religion at California State University, Chico. They are fascinated with movement, frames of reference near and far, and exchanges between decay and growth. By their selected poems, Emma looks to memorialize an autumn. In the recent years of their life, fall has shown up dressed and ready to go in its full creative-destructive, transitional power with a death, a breakup, and a degenerative disease diagnosis. It’s from these forces that Emma’s poems spring into their very first writing publication, ever.