In winter, beech leaves
to their parents’ generous
fingers. They call it marcescence,
this refusal to move out of the house
and get a job, such as
stunning us into silence
with their glittering bodies,
or teaching the grasses about
migration. They could,
if they wished, show us how
to yield to the habits of pill bugs
and centipedes. And of course,
to the wind, a reminder
that falling is not always a clumsy
stumbling, a sudden starburst
of limbs, a foal crumbling
to the earth, but on occasion,
an etude, a study of the air,
an exercise in paying attention.
Perhaps they fear spreading
the dark rumors of our beginnings,
the secret musks of our bodies,
or tsking our fortunes: this is the bed,
and your now restless body, one day,
the bolster.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 25, Issue 5.
Elizabeth Cranford Garcia’s most recent work has appeared in Tar River Poetry, Portland Review, CALYX, Tinderbox Poetry, and Anti-Heroin Chic, is the recipient of the 2022 Banyan Poetry Prize, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She is the author of Stunt Double and serves as the current Poetry Editor for Dialogue: a Journal of Mormon Thought. Read more of her work at elizabethcgarcia.wordpress.com.
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