My daughter slides a lump
into her pocket at the beach.
I can’t tell what it is: clunky black rock
or mangled shell. Children love muddy feathers.
Just an ordinary talisman underfoot
to me. A lot of people were killed today
at a mall. Shopping bags and sales receipts.
Errands. Every turn of her head
yields treasure. She always
finds another. We lob the day
and a kite into the blue empty.
We have to relinquish it all.
The tailwind so stagnant,
we’re barely aloft. In this country,
mothering is the verb for carrying a muscle
of no use, for bearing an armor
stretched over detonated ribs.
It’s the only law left
to shield a child’s body.
I was fooled into thinking
tenderness could fuel mercy
for too long. We’re at the edge
of the continent, and the air is a dead end
my mind wades into
alone. I don’t know the probability
of what’s underneath the sand.
Up from the next churn, the remnants
of a horseshoe crab and its 300 million years
of lineage. The breeze feels for our faces
and keeps moving.
–
Andrea Krause lives in Portland, Oregon. Her poems have been published in SWWIM Every Day, Rust & Moth, The Inflectionist Review, HAD, Tiny Wren Lit, and elsewhere. You can find her on Twitter at @PNWPoetryFog.