I’m pleased to announce the release of John Liberatorea’s new CD titled ”Catch Somewhere,” featuring his compositions and performances by the Zohn Collective. I am especially grateful to flutist Molly Barth for her exquisite solo performance of “Gilded Tree,” which was inspired by my poem “Fable” in my book Trickster (University of Iowa Press: 2014). “Catch Somewhere” is available from Barnes & Noble. The link is in my Bio. The foldout CD cover and booklet feature gorgeous art work by Esther Traugot, whose piece “Untitled (Quail Egg)” graced the cover of Trickster.  Esther’s work can be found at her website: Esther Traugot Art Works (esthertraugot.com). The poem “Fable” appears below:

 

Fable 

 

—for Esther Traugot

 

 

1.

I began innocently enough

Dressing the Apple tree in unmatched socks

To dissuade the deer from grazing

To deter the Codling moths from burrowing

To keep the squirrels at bay—

After all, the fruit was mine.

 

 

2.

Socks made Tree’s limbs look naked.

What if I clothed them too, used hooks & yarn?

I decided to crochet in gold.

Twigs too delicate for yarn, I stitched with string

Disguising every seam with tiny knots.

I gilded Tree, limb-by-limb—

Black twig tips I left unclothed, so light

And wind might fondle them.

 

 

3. 

I couldn’t stop stitching. 

Seashell was empty, its silence lost

To echoes, exiled to noise. 

What could I do but fill it? Go at it 

With hooks & yarn. If a living Tree

Could be clothed, why not a Shell?

In Shell’s blue spiral, I nested gold squares. 

Shell was luminous, silent again.

 

4. 

Then, Oblong, unbalanced Egg

Fragile, alone, needed to be clothed.

I hooked a hood of thin gold thread.

I left a pale oval, where a face

Might appear. I never dropped a stitch.

My hooks sang only being or nothingness.

Egg pulsed gold light—

Its dark inside secure.

 

 

5.

Where my yarn lapsed, shadows

Began, extending every object out in time.

Fine gradated shadows of the Apples

The Tree, the Shell, the Egg—

Shadows articulating time, its

Ceaseless touching, prodding on. 

There was no way to intervene, to save.

My hands lay folded in my lap.

The gold quivers with light.