March 28, 2025: Jennifer Elen Brid, "Sap Season"
Sap Season In loving memory of Helen Haskell Remien by: Jennifer Elen Brid everything is in a circle they said roundness of birch trees bark thin and curling Golden Lake, the tires of the bike that could have killed me on James Lake Road across from the sixteen acres where we tapped maples for amber elixir, stirring, stirring in the cook pan sweet steam and woodsmoke, a benediction in that garage of logs and chipped chinking snow-melt streaked across the floor some March not long ago my friend Helen offered me a jar of sugar water the first of sap gathered filled with Faery glee, her body thin and curling I had forgotten sap’s mellow sweetness how it courses through the body how it made me feel at one with trees only the maples knew or the Faeries maybe that this would be her parting gift this woman made...