PALMETTO POEM: How to embrace and how to let go

For Jennifer Blum

By Worthy Branson Evans, special to Charleston Currents

Build a world around

a man standing at a window.

He doesn’t even have to be

a man.

He can even sit.

The window can be a mirror,

and it can be a wall.

The man can be

a waking woman

looking into a crack

in the plaster.

The woman can stand.

She can be a child

flushing a suction toilet

on a moving train.

A train can be

an Orient Express

and it can be

the regional route

from the Northeast.

A region can be flooded

and a woman can stand

to look over a pool of water

in a sodden backyard.

A child can break

the surface tension

with her dunking steps

The ground underneath

can be a sponge

and it can be grass

flowing as seaweed

Grass can be silt

from a higher region

that traveled

over a flood plain

into a yard where

a woman and

a child can look

from a window

of wet concrete

and say nothing

to the man

in the mirror

growing smaller

Originally published in Marked By The Water (Muddy Ford Press, 2016)

Worthy Branson Evans, author of Green Revolver (USC Press, 2010), is a poet, artist, freelance writer and communications specialist for a Medicare contractor. He spent his high school and college years wandering Lowcountry landscapes and the streets of Charleston.  He now lives in Columbia.  On Facebook.