sleeping on the clouded bottom of the bay.
A cliché, I know. Pretend that it dreams
of the luster of pearls it will never make.
Pretend the grit beneath your skin isn’t an irritant,
or the slender blackberry sticker in your finger
that you worry with your teeth, hoping to dislodge it,
does not bother you. It swells up anyway.
It’s embedded in your skin like an old memory.
Pretend that those stinging nettles
growing in a boggy patch down by the creek
will not sting you. Not this time. You get a free pass.
Do you remember how your grandmother
donned leather gloves to gather nettles for potherbs?
They tasted of dank secrets of the creek, midsummer.
Was it because she had no money for dinner greens?
You probably shouldn’t have told those city kids
to grab them like that. Such childish meanness.
They were not the enemy. You were too young to know
that change is inevitable, but you fought it anyway.
Soon it will be time to return to school.
That new dress she made is a song of the future.
But you couldn’t let go of summer’s hard promise,
the tawny hills, the dark oaks whispering secrets
you couldn’t quite translate in the breeze,
no matter how hard you listened. Meanwhile,
the last wasps droned on, deer desperately browsed,
looking for anything green—even the bitter ivy.
Pretend the golden bay leaves
clattering like hooves on the tin roof
are not small coffin nails
hammering home the end of the season.
8/16/23 Write On! with Terri Glass
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