~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Alvin and Ila

In this old photograph, it is summertime
and my grandparents, Alvin and Ila, are
sitting in lawn chairs by their house on
Martin Street. My grandmother is taking
a sip of coffee, her head bowed as if in
prayer. Her gray hair is combed away
from her forehead, her skin as smooth
as her cup. She is wearing a light blouse
with a floral pattern that flatters her petite
figure, her small waist. My grandfather’s
face is in profile, his dark hair gleaming
in the sun. His body has thickened in late
middle age, so he is barrel-chested in his
white dress shirt, and heavy of jowl. But
his hand, holding his lit cigarette, is the
same hand that held his bride so tenderly
as they stood, pressed together on a river-
bank, kissing with such abandon that the
person who captured it on film must have
felt like an intruder. But in this picture,
taken decades later, no part of their bodies
is touching, though their chairs are side-
by-side, and their right legs crossed in the
same direction. Ila’s toes are curled in the
slipper-soft shoes she liked to wear, and
Alvin’s black leather shoe follows the arc
of his wife’s narrow foot. They are as close
as a pair of ice skaters, perfectly aligned,
just before they join hands and glide away.

A Nimble Deer

A deer that was, only a minute ago,
quietly munching, leaps over a wooden fence,
nimble as a goat. She rears up, after
reaching the other side, like a trick dog—
her front hooves dangling from her useless
forelegs, her hind legs absorbing all the weight.
She cranes her soft, brown neck just far enough
to reach the succulent leaves of a dogwood tree.
The others watch—at least four young deer
that stick to low-hanging branches—their tails
flicking like little propellers that fail
to lift them from the earth.

In the Midst of Grief, a Heron

Healing begins with the blue heron hunting
in the frigid water of a shallow pond.

Wings folded, neck tucked into its feathered
breast, it stands motionless in a shelter

made of branches, alone save for its shadow.
What would it hurt to loosen our grip

on grief? To allow the soft gray-blue
of a heron’s body to soothe our eyes, tired

of shedding tears? This day will never come
again and the heron will soon fly. Already,

the light is fading, taking with it all the time
that has ever passed. Let this peace soak

into our skin like medicine, remain with us
long after the heron is gone.