The Flowing Storehouse of the World

Two mountains surrounding her

as she walks between pear rows—

green bartlett, red anjou,

stark crimson — and always

these white mountains,

their wintered peaks;

two mountains feeding the rivers

that feed the river,

as a pear carries its seeds,

as each woman is a basket,

as rivers carry history

in the bony jaws of fish.

 

Penelope Scambly Schott's verse biography A is for Anne: Mistress Hutchinson Disturbs the Commonwealth received the Oregon Book Award for Poetry in 2008. In 2009 she published Six Lips. Her newest book, Crow Mercies, will appear this fall from Calyx Press.