April 2024
Bio Note: My writing appears in 47 literary reviews. and my two books of poems, Lyrical Years (2023, Kelsay) and What I Meant to Say Was... (2023 Impspired) and graphic memoir My Life in Fish: One Scientist’s Journey (2023, Impspired) are all available on Amazon.
A Gift
They home, like salmon to their natal stream, seeking the comfort of the only nest they’ve known. Childhood neurons triggered by beef bourguignon, baked ziti, and bedrooms that remain undenned. At 70 resentment still can brush my cheeks red. Nerves quick to fire with one more many-petaled request. Even from one’s own muscled genes. Even when it’s all years past. But, what a gift it is when children return home to snuggle in bed despite their thirty-something years and job tenure. Ashes in an urn yield no warmth.
Picking Rattlesnake Beans
Dark-roast is my first pleasure of
a July morning—then it’s zoysia
wet-nuzzling my toes as I walk through
the backyard, and open the deer fence
for morning’s garden harvest.
The corners of the sun’s mouth turn
upwards, hands flinging a top sheet of
shortleaf pines off waking limbs—her face
chrome yellow and steaming, like ear corn
finishing in the boil.
Beans snap with lust in heat—high today 96.
Rattlesnake, a misnomer for the farmer’s
faithful friend—a fail-safe bean, filling
jars stacked in any Georgia larder.
Some say they’re named for coiling round
and round the vine, but not my beans—
straight and six inches long.
Parting seafoam leaves to find sheathed fruit,
minute hairs gently trace my outstretched
forearm, the tingle stretching to my spine,
it is an emerald climax.
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL