TREE HOUSE
Like a scalene triangle,
the three longleaf
pines looked cattywampus, only more so
than you might reckon, on account of
the slope where they grew
out of a grassy rise.
Beneath, a thick bed of pine straw
sketched a whisky brown oval
and caught odd pebbles and twigs and cones;
anything that fell stayed stuck
there like Bible character figures
on a Sunday school felt board—
a little midden
of treasures from God’s Creation.
When I was yet a mite, I called it my
tree house, even though it wasn’t an elevated
platform as a proper tree house
should be; but then, not much in the world I observed was
proper (whether right proper or highfalutin prim) or
as it might should have been.
Using the deep pockets on dresses too mini
to look like they could hold much of anything,
I’d sneak out my dolls that I’d
already been told I was too old
to countenance playing with—Dusty and Misty
I sometimes called them, or Dawn and Eve, my idea of
the downright coolest, absolute grooviest of
peacenik hippie teens, such as I hoped to grow up to be.
Then, since my comprehension of coolness, grooviness,
and hippiedom only went so far, I’d play to my strengths:
I’d fashion fine china plates from plaited grass blades,
tea cups from stray white oak leaves molded to a hollow,
and hats from daisy chains I’d wind round our heads,
and imagine us wearing Lilly Pulitzer shift dresses,
Pappagallo
ballet flats, and white kid gloves.
Like nice Carolina girls who’d made perfect curtsies
at the coming-out ball, my doll-
friends and I would attend a deb season tea party—
the cattywampus pines suddenly transformed
into an elegant arbour on a corner of lawn,
the whisky brown pine straw midden
into an antique dining table brought outside
layered in linen and lace, and covered with platters of hors
d'oeuvres.
Somehow, I’d’ve set my hippie fantasies aside
(after all, it had always
been about wishing for the freedom to define
myself—to me, that sounded radical),
and easily slipped into the known expectations—
good little Southern lady that I was raised to be.
TRAUMATIC AMNESIAC
I was myself, and
you were you, and
I knew exactly where we stood . . . until a shadow
suddenly descended—
abruptly obscured
my knowledge,
my recognition
of anyone
or anything
around me.
Stop!
Where am I?
Who am I?
Who are you?
You stare, and the intensity in
your gaze overwhelms
me until I turn
my head.
I study our surroundings:
a nearly full parking lot,
a tall brick box of a building and its twin
next door; in the near distance,
I think I see the outline
of a canal—or
am I only imagining
something I’m seeking to recall?
Isn’t there something I should know
about this town and a canal?
Are you all right?
I don’t know.
What’s happening here?
I have no idea. (I have nothing else either.)
I force myself to meet
your worried frown.
In this light, your eyes shine
blue with flecks of green—warm,
like grass reflected in the sky, not the pale cold
ice of other eyes I vaguely envision—and I believe
I can see . . . hope I can see . . . how you are so
different than he, or she, or they . . . how you will keep me
secure, even though there’s nothing I know and
you could be a stranger to me.
Logic tells me we must
be friends. Otherwise, why would I be here
with you? So I let you lead me
up a sidewalk,
into a building, utilitarian, institutional,
onto an elevator,
into an anonymous apartment I don’t recognize.
But maybe this is good? Uncertainty and insecurity say this is
okay
because it’s nothing like what I
might remember if I felt I could let myself.
Whispers, whispers . . .
I don’t understand.
Voices talking around me . . .
I can’t begin to comprehend.
I still don’t know anything . . . everything.
Why am I not more afraid?
My present is unclear, my future only more so.
Yet, for whatever reason, I sense that I’m safe here.
Exhausted from trying to recall—for how long?—I rest
and eventually sleep and dream
bright, vivid carnival dreams—
not a happy, playful carnival, though,
but a nightmarish midway, with people dressed as characters
who aren’t at all what they seem, and freaks,
and mirrors that reflect falsely, reminding me
that I can never know where the truth lies
(or even whether that is pun or truth) . . .
until I open my eyes and suddenly see
the shadow lift, and then I understand:
the past is gone, and
everything good I need to know is
right here, right now, with you and me.
THE MEADOW OF THEIR COMMON SONG
They pursue freeways north along the ocean,
past brackish marshes and dusty headlands
bounding the Pacific. They’re out of formation
and appear disoriented, but are borne aloft
by some supernatural power, toward
a place that holds their history—
and behind them flies nothing but faith
and cloudless azure hue. I’d hold
the mapmakers responsible,
but should they fairly be blamed
for trying the re-create the landscape and the True Way,
for attempting to retouch the failures
that have touched their own wholly human ancestry?
It all wraps up like a Tinseltown flick;
I think you know what I mean:
the lost and forgotten miraculously discover one another,
swallows of a feather flocking together, and home becomes
the meadow of their common song.
HELP IN TRANSIT
Written in mid-April 2020, in New York City, during the
COVID-19/coronavirus pandemic
The siren whistle hoots,
a lonely owl sound splitting through a
New York City night,
sky starless in appearance
due to street lamps and other lights
reflected from myriad structures
and, of course, the ambulance strobes;
the whistle slides up and down a soprano scale
of four or five notes, back and forth, back and forth,
at the same time as
the vehicle glides
through largely empty roads—
even the so-called emergency routes
seldom travelled during these precarious times.
Someone new is being taken
to an already-overfull ER;
we’ve heard the tales and
we’ve seen the film,
on the local news,
of patients on gurneys lining hospital halls
because there’s no more room to put them all;
some say that the EMTs
have been told to let the cardiac codes go, to
die at home if they can’t be revived,
and that even the sickest coronavirus-symptomatic
aren’t to be transported unless
they need to be admitted for access
to hospital machinery that can’t be supplied at home.
It’s 2:12, then 3:36 a.m.,
and sleep still eludes me; the echoing, almost-constant
sirens haunt with their strident tune
even when they aren’t right outside on the same
thoroughfare where we’re more used to seeing hook and ladder
trucks travel to and from their nearby firehouse,
and I’m struck by how different the types of sirens sound—
for nearly twenty years, I’ve believed I couldn’t hear
FDNY emergency vehicles without 9-11 memories
coming to the fore, and now I wonder
if I’ll ever hear ambulance sirens the same again—
without the ghostly images of friends’ family
and friends lost, and others seriously ill,
and the hollow hoot of help in transit.
Margaret Adams Birth is the author of Borderlands (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Her poetry has appeared
in more than 50 journals including Plainsongs,
Lunch Ticket, Third Wednesday, and The
Pointed Circle, and is forthcoming
in Medusa’s Kitchen and Your Daily Poem. Three of her poems were previously published in Lothlorien
Poetry Journal on 6 September 2021. She has also published short stories and novellas (some of them
written under the pen names Maggie Adams and Rhett Shepard), short nonfiction,
and even a few comic books. She is a native North Carolinian who
has also lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, upstate New York,
southern California, a rain forest on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, and now
New York City. You can find her online
at https://www.facebook.com/MaggieAdamsRhettShepard.
Beautiful words and work!
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