Jacqueline Henry
Thorny Acacia

Sprigs of acacia whip in the desert wind
Where he lives just below a rocky slope
Leading down to the sea.

                                               He must have known
The significance of the tree, the bush that burned
For hours without ever burning, this tree
That fortified the ark with two-by-fours
                                               so man wouldn't sink.

He had listened to its stories as
He planed its bark for planks to make the table
He would sit at when he broke the bread-

Gossip about the guard who'd cut off its branch
And forged it into a crown that would bloom even after
The sprig petrified and the tree died,

After the two-inch thorns crushed his skull
And released the tannins to ferment his blood
Into the sweetest wine-that pours out

                                               From his side onto the earth,
                                               Still.

_ _

Jacqueline Henry is a New York-based freelance writer and editor. Her work has appeared in publication including The New York Times, The Southampton Review, and The North Atlantic Review. She won first place in the 2009 Writer's Digest Poetry Contest for her poem "The Undertaker's Wife." She is an MFA graduate from Stony Brook University. In 2014, she walked six hundred miles across Spain on the Camino de Santiago.

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