Poems by Dave Worrell
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Cherokee Fields
by Dave Worrell
From Canary Fall 2015
Dave lives in the Lower Delaware Watershed, between the Pennsauken Creek and the Cooper River in South Jersey.
After Cherokee Field
Oil on canvas
By Catherine Kuzma
These russet-dark nearly leafless trees are all
that remains of the bulldozed woods cut down
to make space for seven ballfields—standing empty,
day after day, at Cherokee High School.
But the painter
aims higher, far above the chalk lines and goal posts.
Silhouetted maples and sycamores the only earth-
bound beings here. All the rest is lemon meringue
late-day sky, overlaid with apricot clouds—and angry
ones too: indigo slate, darkening toward black.
As a boy, I played ball on nearby sandlots—became what I am.
In the tree-line, far left: a human figure? Are even more
lurking amidst the sepia trunks and branches?
This once
was woodlands where the Lenape trapped rabbit, gathered
huckleberries; their arrowheads still litter the nearby trails.
© Dave Worrell