Tasting Pine by Tamara Madison

Sap glistens in drops
beneath the new-trimmed
pines. I think of tears,
bits of shattered glass,
even diamonds, remember
the sticky beads
that gathered beneath
a wasp’s nest;
once I touched my finger
to a viscous drop,
put it on my tongue –
sweet, like Karo.
Now I touch the pine sap,
put finger to tongue;
the pungency of pine
resounds in my head
all morning, along
with Mother’s warning
that some things are better
kept in the realm
of imagining.



Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbooks The Belly Remembers and Along the Fault Line, and two full-length volumes of poetry, Wild Domestic and Moraine. Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, the Writer’s Almanac, Sheila-Na-Gig, Worcester Review, and many other publications. Her newest full-length collection, Morpheus Dips His Oar is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. More about Tamara can be found at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.