Poetry
“Found,” “Where Are All the Small, Wild Things,” and “I have folded all my sorrows”
Image by Ales Krivec
For Unsplash+
Found
He arrives on horseback middle of a blizzard
in the Rockies, boots on, to collect me. There
is a valley of snow between us. He says nothing
about seeing the parole officer. I’m inside a lodge
with a roaring fire, legion of kin, we’re playing
Texas no hold’em and Scrabble with occasional
outbursts of singing “On top of Old Smokey” and
“Don’t bury me alone on the prairie”. He comes
back in Spring steps out of his truck in front of the
cabin where I’m staying. I walk the wooden plank
over mud and melting snow to where he waits.
He takes me with his mouth, drinks me,
his winged feet folded in his Mayan boots.
We talk and kiss, laugh and eat and drink at the
long table, sitting so close on the bench we overlap.
Then my parole officer knocks at the door, I open it
a crack, tell him to get lost. My heart is jittery.
Liberty is waking and wants to take me somewhere.
Where Are All the Small, Wild Things
after Elaine Terranova’s Rinse, “Where to Look”
miniature pinecones, prickly umbo against my thigh,
twig of purple berries firm not juicy, clutch of long-leaf
needles shaken loose, stem oozing sticky sap
spotted red and white mushrooms on long stems
small carpet of green moss lifted off a rock by the creek
grey puffball squished of spores no longer smoking
in my shirt pocket the gigantic carapace of a black beetle,
didn’t think there were any that big. And in his,
a grasshopper struck stiff by lightning or a heart attack
maybe a cicada zapped in the middle of a serenade
rubbing leg against torso, cascading whirs then silence.
Holding hands, we glide along rain-soaked leaves brown,
yellow, splash of deep burgundy, breathing in damp smells
of the forest, carting our cache. We walk on air, lifted
by our treasure seeping through cloth, grafting pocket to pelt.
I have folded all my sorrows—
into my hip pockets,
cushions for sitting long
in wooden rockers—no
longer prickly, jabbing me,
soft against my pelvic bones
as I rock. I’m not afraid to pull
one out of my jeans, open it up
inhale the acrid scent of terror,
hear the beginning of a mudslide,
distant rumble after a flash,
catch the aroma of loneliness.
Holding another in my hand, I finger
it, feel my limbs, my heart, my long
back in empty space, arms on strike,
trunk stuck. Where the hell did I
leave my roller skates?