~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Naming Leaves

Six days after the great ice storm
so chilling that it knocked fear of Covid
straight out of our brains,
I hold baby Henry in my arms.

We are in my daughter’s backyard
and already engulfed in a soft,
spring turn of sky. An owl calls
from the recesses of a magnolia.

Baby Henry looks at a bush,
its leaves shriveled by recent ice.
He raises an arm, points a finger.
Phooof. Shifts the finger
two inches, says Vvuuu

Now Henry turns his attention
to the wings of a fern.
He can’t yet fully extend
that index finger. It curls
in the direction of a frond.

Eyes luminous as twin moons,
Henry focuses on a single leaf, says
Tthaaa; Again, even softer, Whough.

In the aftermath of the storm’s destruction
Baby Henry has purposed himself
to naming, one by one, the leaves
and then, I guess, each grass blade,
every stitch of rain that falls
downward through his gaze

so that I might come to know them
as he does and to understand
how to turn any afternoon
into a slow benediction.

Settled
—for Marilyn Shapley

If I were a neighborhood
I’d keep a Mississippi kite nest
and one plastic bag in tatters
up in the loft of an oak.

I’d pull sunset down
into a horizon of tangled branches
that have the voice of an owl.

Shadow and frayed light would
wash over hoods and windshields
dappled under tree branches, street lamps
as cars accelerate into midnight.

By sleight of hand, any sewage
which could be mistaken
for what happens to my soul
during this age of perplexed confusion

would be trundled off underground,
unsmelled, unseen to be treated,
assaulted with chemicals, then
pumped into rivers that nourish
bass, crappie and catfish
in their soulful, looping
pathways towards the Gulf.

I would let all of the dogs pee
wherever the dogs want to pee
as their masters stare into time
at the other end of a crescent of leash.

I would let old house timbers rot,
let rodents burrow and scuttle,
snakes sizzle through grass blades,
lawns receive regular crew cuts
and birds weave subtle tapestries
through broad expanses of daylight.