Holding Life: Four poems by Melanie Mills.

© Copyright Melanie G. Mills.  All Rights Reserved.


CROP CIRCLES

Do we always land
where we began?

Baby steps, the toes
so fat they seem
platonically related to the body,
toddling through
water glass-beaded grass
leaving tender prints.
 
Teenagers thrusting
through tall grass --
leaping then lying down
for rushed love-making
before they are discovered,
getting chiggers where
chiggers should never be.
 
Autumn has turned to winter,
I look upon straw rotting in the field
with the Reaper’s breath a whisper away.
Is this where I am going,
or where I have been sent?
 


MORNING POINTE REDUX
 
That nurse with
Medusa hair 
keeps staring — as if I should feel the guilt 
she is daggering my way.
 
You and I are turning to stone,
Granny.
I could supply a thousand reasons for my absence
but they would be Hera’s empty echoes.

I can’t watch as each of your cells 
converts to just another pebble
and I become a forgotten statue.
 
I wheel you to the garden --
you adored flowers once, 
their smell a taste of yesterdays.
 
You stare at something,
a God perhaps,
that I can’t see in a cloudless sky.
You're just an alfresco effigy
who breathes on occasion. 
 
I’ve lost you to a wind 
that erodes you as I watch.
 
At least you won’t remember
all the times I wasn’t there, 
when you weren’t there either.
 

 
DROWNING HOLE
 
It was there —

           my Dad played fetch with me as the stick.
           Over and over he threw me in for the dog 
           to retrieve when I went under.
           I learned to swim.
           
It was there —
 
            I learned the difference
            between boys and girls,
            practiced kisses behind the concession stand.
            Freedom tasted
            like cotton candy--
            sweet but transient.
          
It was there—
           
           I saw my first ghost:
           Jimmy Wilhoit, pale and shaky,
           more alcohol than courage,
           slip off the edge of the cliff,
           split his head like a watermelon on the rocks below.
               
           There were more along the cliff and in the water,
                    gurgling while going under with a gasp of disbelief.  
          
It was there--
           
           I learned to leave the ghosts behind.
 
 

RIVER WORN

If I discovered
while walking along the bank
that the river had spit you out,
I would gather you--
sleek and pale.

I would rub you
for strength if I were feeble
and luck if I were frantic

and cherish you every time
I held you,
smooth
in my hand.