~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Eivind E. Olsen

St. Pete’s Resurrections

(Pleopeltis Polypodioides)

    ...      

A hammock slacks between two palms

an early morning by St. Pete’s promenade,

where in the low tide just beyond

willets peck at flecks of rising sun,

and on the rope at the toe end

a squirrel moves towards

two feet in the hammock

like a tightrope walker hunched

down on all fours. A hand jerks

the canvas taut and the squirrel

jolts back: that’s how I know

whoever’s wrapped in shrouds

isn’t dead. Their one-two act

goes one for as long as I watch

and heading back

I spot green ferns in the bark

on the branch of a wild tamarind:

ferns that quicken at the faintest smell of rain.

And the man who slept in the nook of a stone

facade has awoken and gone.

Eivind E. Olsen is a poet from Stavanger, Norway, who spent several years in Texas growing up, and is an MA student in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in San Pedro River Review, The Dewdrop, Cathexis Northwest Press, Cassandra Voices, Boudin (The McNeese Review), and the anthology “The Writes of Spring” to be published by Tupelo Press. He writes in English and Norwegian.