a poem for Sharyn

anodyne

serving as transportation for a thirty year old the tricycle fails
to enchant, but the ghost of hard plastic big wheels hovering around her
alleviates the itch in her palms, but not the itch of dried Kingfield grass,
painful where it pricks her arches through sandal straps, it's
not as if it would be unpleasant to have, but the red metal seat is
likely to sear -- are those scars from the year she was seven and forgot
to pull the hem of her shorts down before she peddled down the block.
fourty-first, not too much further, she wants to take off her sandals
or bathe in aloe or drink iced chai with soy milk or hold her son's hand, not
rouse raised eyebrows from sleepy egg eaters and paper readers, their
tensions plucked and redrawn but crinkled, big wheels or tricyles forgotten
so long ago the scars have lost referentiality, but she knows that one
on her ankle is from the neighbor's driveway and they watched she-ra
and got lemonade and band-aids and kisses and she could sit next to
the little man and pretend she's his age and his lost-tooth grin is the same
as hers, and the band-aid for the blister a secret code, those scars
underneath better than a photograph, ghosts of the way home

Comments

[Sharyn]

Yay! I've been sick since last Thursday and needed something to lift my spirits. Thank you!

[Rachel Rust]

I have often wondered how this works myself.
Here a couple of sites I checked out.

http://www.soyouwanna.com/site/syws/tealeaves/tealeaves3.html
http://www.mojomoon.net/tleaves.html

[Iseult]

Cool - thanks Rach! I might have to try reading some tea leaves - or maybe we can do it together when I am in town next month!