3 Sonnets
Tree Climber Sonnet
Arms wrapped around the low branch, I lift my legs up to hang
slothlike, pull my body over on top,
rub arms and legs. The bark scrapes my undersides tender.
Sturdy legs in the trunk’s first fork, I brace to reach and climb
up and up, until the limb’s circumference is no longer enough to hold
my forty odd pounds, distributed between handholds and toeholds,
higher than ever I’ve gone, when Billy comes to gather me home. “Up here,” I call.
His head leans back to find my voice, his face pale moon atop a sky of white t-shirt.
Eyes widen. He only says, “Mama wants us home now,” so I look
down to see only distance, no way back. Billy circles, directs
right foot down, just to the right, reach left, like guiding the blind
until body memory awakes, “I know,”
scuttle down the cracks and knobs, drop past the last small fear, and when
A & W Root Beer
The day before we left for Missouri Daddy took us out for root beer.
A & W is the best root beer. The glasses are so cold.
The glasses get a mist on them like in winter
when you can write on the car window with your finger.
The root beer has thick foam at the top, and when you hold
the root beer your fingers make marks on the fogged up sides
of the glass so you hold it by the handle as soon as you can
because it is so cold.
When he turned round in his seat to see us all, Daddy had tears in his eyes,
“ I never thought she’d take you kids away from me.”
Daddy was crying and I never saw him cry before. I wasn’t crying,
not really, but my eyes were misted like the mugs of root beer
and when I looked out it was like looking
through fog on a window
Sonnet of Sand
Swing set, slide and sandbox that Daddy built
and how we all rode out to the sand works
past the cones of sand, multicolored, sifted fine and coarse,
to pick up burlap bags of sand to pour in the sandbox.
Sand in the sandbox. Sand on the beach in the summer.
Billy and I built sand castles and tunnels.
Wet sand clung to our arms,
got under our fingernails.
You have to stick in your arm as far as you can to make a proper tunnel,
while the other person digs from the other side
‘til that moment when you break through, a finger hole first, then
if you stretch as far as you can, and he stretches, you can
clasp each other’s hand. My hand. Billy’s hand.
The tunnel finished then, or it collapses.