M. L. Brown
Into the Pond
I’ve waded into old age not thinking
I was towards the deep, but
I’m drowning in loss
as I watch a tiny girl launch
into the pond from high on the rocks,
fearless,
and fear is so much of it now, a misstep
could cause a fall, a break, and so
I push neatly against the water. Some days,
I think I’ll hurry to the drop off.
So what
if the best is yet to come? I’m done
with all my running, Red Rover, I’m
careful, intolerable.
And oh yes, I see
how my reflection funhouses on the water.
Marigold
By August, the marigold on the deck
is giant, branching from a center stalk
into dog days of yellow-orange and musk.
Blossoms like fringed pin cushions
stem into air, pose there, a geometry
of dance and my envy, the whole plant
working fine, growing into gold,
no branch snapped or bract denuded,
veins pulsing water from the dirt,
all systems flow from root to fern-like
leaves, a bright girl worshipped by the sun
with a scent that says don’t touch, every petal
like a blade that helps me remember my dead,
my dying.
Phantom Peach
That fruit-laden branch, odd-angled
and long-leaved, weeps its weight
to the ground. We hoist it, tether it
to the sturdy pear across the path,
the white rope, taut, knotted off.
A day later, the limb snaps, cracks
open, white shards of bone-wood spike
the air, the whole holding on
by a bit and its bark.
Oh, to rethink the rope and its attachment, not
here, but there. Not that tight. Not at all.
We watch for the leaves to wither, for dusk
to come to the brilliant skins, and I still
see the tree whole; but then the saw.
M. L. Brown is the author of Call It Mist, winner of the Three Mile Harbor Press Book Prize, and Drought, winner of the Claudia Emerson Chapbook award. Her work has appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, and Cave Wall, among other journals and anthologies including, Blue Will Rise Over Yellow: An International Poetry Anthology for Ukraine.
