The fallen branch is a whale mouth agape
Elephant eyes in white birch watch as
vines snake in slow coils toward the sunlit
canopy. This place is a zoo. Why before
did I notice only trees? We are not to speak
of pets after a funeral but I can tell you I still
feel the soft bag of his body cooling
in my arms. I crawled in tears for weeks
mining the carpet for papery claw husks
and palmed them like a witch. There are
monks who sit at length with corpses to
meditate on how decay is a swell garden
party or how vanity is pointless. I retch
at writhing grains of fly larvae but here—
where inky puddles digest skeletons of
spent leaves, where a pine’s splayed torso
sinks beneath the hungry weight of moss—
I could live here. Today I saw a hubcap
twirl away from its host and fall with a cymbal
crash to the curb. I can hope glittering roadside
shards held the sun there, that later a taproot
wormed through the asphalt. Today I met
the white halo of feathers around a robin’s eye.
How many of those might fit in a palm?
Header photo by Jacelyn Yap.
Lauren Endicott is an emerging poet though a lifelong lover and writer of poetry. She has poems published or forthcoming in West Trade Review, Duckhead Journal, SEISMA, Burningword Literary Journal, Ghost City Review, and others. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in social work in the greater Boston area, where she lives with her spouse and two children. IG@laurenelizabethpoet.
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