Backyard, late November, the kids gather rocks
as the day’s darkness descends long before
we do dinner on the deck with the patio heater
sweating propane against the inevitable.
I feel myself spiraling again—into the old fears
premature death, rapid aging, the loss of sensation
as the virus rears and hearts hang like the last
yellow leaves on the Norway maples, stooping
behind the back fence. So golden, yet even they
a cipher of invasiveness, surrounding my children,
who heave their stones, heaping and shaping in cold mud
some strange memorial to these missing months.
And in the front, the lone Japanese maple, ruby in the rough
clenching her stars, uncertain whether to surrender
or to stand still—so very
still.
–
Jesse Curran is a poet, essayist, scholar, and educator who lives in Northport, NY. Her writing has appeared in a number of journals including Ruminate, About Place, Spillway, Leaping Clear, Green Humanities, Blueline, and Still Point Arts Quarterly.