Through Quivering Leaves

Meadow Song

Please do not hide your pride and happiness

for fear that you will make me sad. I am sad. Of course.

         --Nancy Lewis, Social Media Post

As a wailing colicky infant, she’d turn

in my arms and bury her sweet face

in the soft hollow between shoulder

and chest, pressed to my fearful thumping

heart where she’d finally fall asleep.

51 windblown years later, I am the one

burying my face in a pillow, on my knees

behind locked doors, head bowed,

hands twisted together divining

away the ache in the belly of my soul,

when she appears, a celestial messenger

through a computer screen, standing over me

with a motherly smile telling me to get up

off this self-pitying floor, this soul numbing

sanctuary from which there is no asylum,

extending a soft hand through a pixilated

confessional, leading me up the mountain

to the breezy meadow her sweet boy loved,

my arm around her narrow shoulders,

her arm around my thick waist, his laughter

riding the wind through quivering leaves,

a song of unrelenting joy, unending sorrow

blowing across our smiling wet faces

         —SL, May 2024, Port Royal, SC