ManicDDaily

I am posting the new poem below for the dVerse Poets Pub “Open Link” night and also for Gooseberry Garden’s poetry picnic.

Adult Child

It seemed to her walking on a beachside street
near the home of aging parents
that she saw in the five feet
of a young palm, the slightly goofy grace
of a fawn or baby giraffe:
in the ridges of green trunk–
knock-knees; in the froth of
lime green frond–the soft bristle of
first-sprout hair; overall a sense of oversized
hooves, paws, the floppy underfooting of
fledgling wonder.

Yet even as she held the young palm
in the back of her mind, another childishness
crept to the forefront–a child’s
fear of death–not fear of the unknown, or
even loss, but of moist brown earth,
clods of non-human
clay, the closing-in of lonely terrible cold; a fear of death that does not
truly believe in death but does know darkness.

It clung to her through the visit
until, at the shore itself, after they had tossed in
a rough sea, which, in the power of that fear, was
almost intolerable to her, and her husband passed
a towel over the brilliance beading their skin,
she could not stop herself from reaching back to him
and whispering, oh please
don’t let me be buried, and he, confused,
wrapped strong limbs (a Northern person, he is so unlike a palm) around
her trunk, softly kissing and trying jokes, till she said again, please and
promise, and he did.

Then, determined to cast off the still-stalking fear, she darted awkwardly
to the surf and willed herself into a cartwheel
at the edge of the ocean-firmed sand, and when that one worked, another, and
another again, knowing that one cannot will ebullience, but also
that there is nothing
like turning upside down for clearing a head, and
another one, until blinking in the shine, they marveled, before
the next wave, at
the clarity of the palm prints, there, in the wedge of sand and sea,
spread wide, five-fingered.

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