Mary McColley

RIVER BANK

I remember the river bank:
my shoulders broken on the grass, bees fingering the thighs of the flowers,
green thread sewing the ragged seam of pines to the sky
and beside me, the old house where no one lived, white clapboards slatted.
All fell down to the cattails, the ache of mud-flats veined & slit as a wrist.
Crooked stone steps eclipsed in solstices of reed, where my father asked
a woman upright as hardwood to marry him, holding out
his big hands, fingers blunt and ill-hewn.
I asked last time I saw him, where did that gold ring go?
He frowned at an empty knuckle, never answered.
My tongue sat a beast of burden, heavy in my mouth.
I remember the calligraphies of lily on the midday grass, how
the ghosts of my parents slipped through wind in a sliver of wings.
They bore their children in a meager soil where the rivers brought them only salt,
the gnawing of the sea. Each summer they built buckled
to winter, again and again, again.

MARY McCOLLEY is a writer and poet originally from Maine. She has wandered and worked for a number of years in France, Thailand, and Palestine. Her pastimes include killing lobsters and selling street art.