Hindsight
isn’t up close as a rearview mirror.
It’s unearthed, like the little blue boot
turned up by the tractor a good few decades
after I told the boys stay out of the field.
Its mud will suck you in and leave the rest of us
more for supper. So of course they waded in
eager for the small doses of fear
children need to grow strong.
I remember laughing with the child
hopping at my side, keeping from
I told you so’s, laying a plank over
all that muck, not even finding a hole
where the boot disappeared quicker
than luck sometimes can.
Its sole isn’t much bigger than my hand.
How young they were, we all were.
I planted the good dirt that boot held
with marigolds, upright
blue holding all that gold.
Found and Lost
At ten, I didn’t snap twigs,
didn’t crackle leaves.
Let silent steps
dissolve me into the forest.
Sat, always, under the same tree.
Imagined staying.
Saw myself taking only
berries here, seeds there,
moss my pillow,
soft bark tied to my feet.
Worried I wouldn’t survive
without books, gave stories
to everything I could see.
Wished to stop growing
afraid I might, unaware,
crush beetles and ants, step
on nests of baby mice. Afraid
I might slam shut on puberty’s hinges
and forget dew licked from leaves.
Might lose the sound peace makes.
Falling From the Hay Wagon
I stand on square bales piled 10 feet high,
pushing them to the edge for others to stack
as July sun shoves between barn boards
in hot dust-ridden stripes.
All of us weary, chaff stuck to sweat
after a long day of haying
in heat dry as the cracked creek bed.
A Benadryl haze makes my limbs
feel like pudding, so wobbly I’m sillier
than usual as I wade to the edge,
still chortling as I trip, tip over,
fall to the barn’s dirt floor,
landing hard between wagon and post,
jeans somehow intact
against a pitchfork’s rusty tines.
I’m jolted into silence
until I find I’m fine,
me, the worrier
who never sees what’s coming.
My family leans over me, aghast
while I lie in the dust laughing
at all the good fortune we have sown.
Portals (Middle Creek Press, 2021)
*
Laura’s latest collection, Portals (2020), was published by Middle Creek Press and is available here.
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