poetry
Hershall Seals and Trisha Runyan
Recent Neighbors
Your nimble fingers
Sky bound yet
Tickling the grass
On the outermost drip line.
Leaf-laced crown over lowly roots
Descending deep
strata of
Dirt and rock in a long
Millennia-cultivated garden
Where now you stand
Stately and stalwart.
Your old man bark
Gnarled and woven skin
Deeply time-engraved
Concealing self-calendared secrets
In concentric circles.
Amber-skinned worshipers danced
Before others began chopping and fencing
Encroaching, defining, and confining.
Fences and streets you never needed
All those seasons prior and still,
Now your sense of self remains tolerant with your
Most recent neighbors.
Hershall Seals
SPRING
Boy, his toe in earth, in soil.
In soil, not green, not brown.
Toe in earth, in soil with Boy.
The earth a path for Boy in joy.
See Girl, her toe in soil with smile
Toe in soil, some green and brown
Girl in joy with toe in earth
A smile to feel the earth with mirth.
Rocks and roots and worms in soil
Boy and Girl with laughter find
In earth, in spring, rocks and roots,
Both green and brown.
Rocks and roots spring forth in soil.
Rocks as needed as the roots,
To hold the earth in place for spring
For Girl and Boy to be in joy.
Are not we silly and are not we fun?
To place our toes in worms and earth
We find a place that warms our toes
A place and thing made just for Spring.
Trisha Runyan
Cenizo
Second Quarter 2018
21