Our week of poetry ends today. Stay tuned for our next poetry week at the end of April.

by Cynthia Pitman

The Plight of the Evergreen

In the fall, the staid magnolia
with her deep green leaves
envies the stately pied oak.
She stands peahen to his peacock,
her autumn leaves
turning a fungal funereal brown
next to his outstretched branches
arrayed in orange and red grandeur.
Even the magnolia’s
lushly fragrant flowers
cannot compensate
for her dull fall robe
or compare to the dying oak’s
vibrant merriment.

Winter will come.
The dreary magnolia
will be the same green again,
while the oak’s regal robe
cracks brown and falls to the ground,
a victim of winter’s high tragedy.
But even then, as he rains death,
he will stand tall,
bearing black bare branches
that herald the end of fall.
In the oak’s mighty winter shadow,
with his dark, stark branches
slicing the sky,
the magnolia will still wear
her same old verdant sheen –
she’s only, after all,
just an evergreen.

***

Seashells

The child I used to be
collected scalloped seashells
and buried them by the sea.
I close my eyes now,
a lifetime later,
and lie back in this sick bed
to watch her at her serious play:

Brow furrowed, she leans
to carefully collect each shell.
Turning it over and over again,
inspecting its shape and colors,
she either places it securely
in her red plastic pail
or tosses it back out to sea.
After her pail is full enough,
she settles on the sand cross-legged
and, with finger crooked,
digs a hole for each shell.
When she has safely buried them
deep enough, she packs the sand
and pats each little mound
with her confident hand.

Why did she bury these little shells?
Were they treasure to lay up
for another day?
Or did she plant them to grow
into a shell big enough
to live in, to hide in, safe, like a snail?
I’ll never know.
But I think one day,
when I’m freed from this insidious bed,
I will float back to that seashore.
Grown there will be memories
of life’s beauty incandescent:
tiny Aphrodites draped in strands
of molten iridescent pearls,
rising resplendent from the shells.

Photo by L S on Unsplash