Anna Moore

Anna Moore is a poet and short fiction writer from Victoria, Canada. Besides The Scores, she has work appearing in Grain, The Antigonish Review, and Contemporary Verse 2. When she’s not reading or writing poems, she can usually be found going for a run by the ocean or baking elaborate desserts.


 

Ode
(Arbutus menziesii)

Weird sister,
basket-weaver,
daemon caught in waking wood;
carved from the hillside,
secrets bound up in the taut
ochre of her arms. The black bear sings
of scratching post, fragrant peel,
rain of hard red berries.

Arbutus skin is trance-red,
trunk round as a home.
Its roots lace the world together,
and when the arbutus tree dies,
we will come apart in a crumbling
of dirt and bruises and spent time.

In summer the tree is the meeting-point
between hard statue and warm blood.
Press your hand against the inner bark:
the moment before Galatea wakes up,
blinks, moves her head to see
who touches her.
The precise temperature of creation.


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