for Theresa
Ravenswood.
Spackled in moss-hatched, epiphytic splendor,
humidity gathers the fine hairs along restless
limbs—me too, alternately thin, curly, heavily scaled,
on my bench, my back, my guard; the chain linked
curls of the Spaniard’s beard, pendants spiral upward
through bald cypress, branching sunlight, slendering
along silver tendrils—we grow aerial roots and shelter
beneath the wings of live oak.
No air. Innocent. Still—cousin-ness bonding us
against older kid oppression—
Snap!
Her ancient shadow upon us, the tyrant with her
unpredictable rule: Stops time. Her own arcana of
offensives blistering us ‘til we glisten, in what followed,
afternoon punishment—
(like evangelical Sunday explosions, corporal fathers
and soldier uncles who flared like lightning)—
but herself predictable as the afternoon storm,
thundered and struck at the nursery, her incubator,
reckoning to fill a quota of injury by inflicting upon us
enough to match her own.
Tom Pearson (he/they) is a poet, choreographer, multimedia artist, and horticulturalist. He is the author of two volumes of poetry, The Sandpiper Spell (2018), and Still, the Sky (2022), with Ransom Poet Publishers. The bi-lingual (Eng./Ital.) edition of the latter, is also available as “Eppure, il Cielo” (2023) from Interno Poesia Editore, Italy. He lives in the woods, just north of New York City, with his partner, cats, and plants on the traditional lands of the Munsee-Lenape. Social media (IG, X, FB): @tompearsonnyc & online at tompearsonnyc.com.