(at Silver Lake, St. Anthony, Minnesota)
If I stare long enough
anything can look like home
A drooping tree can be
my grandmother’s green
drapes, the thick, heavy ones
popular in the 70s
The poplar tree can be
the thing that stole away
my granddaddy and that
house he never built
A blade of grass –the butcher
knife used for family dinners
A twig –the wooden handle
pressing splinters into palm
Scratching squirrels –the bent
fingers of my sister’s hand
oiling my dry scalp
The mud–Blue Magic
Weeds –the rat-tail end of a comb
Sparrows –neighbor kids
tapping pebbles on the glass
asking in high-pitched whisper
Can y’all come out and play?
The crows –their raucous parents
who fight every other day
while ants play the part
of kitchen roaches, scattering
beneath my feet
as I stand at the pond’s edge
a crawling breeze becomes
the hemline of my mother’s dress
sweeping a fragrance of gentleness
if tenderness could have a smell
it would be sweet as the pinkish
wet of sliced watermelon
before drying to a drip
at my elbow’s tip, sweet as the blue
bottom of a firecracker popsicle
inking the center of my pink tongue
If I stand still long enough
I can feel the sun of my youth
like the warmth of a gas bill paid
on a Midwest winter’s day
But today
I welcome summer’s shade
in a world of new surrounding blue
as if this is a place where I belong
- Blue Magic - February 7, 2022
