.
And then, the sadness came & so I braced
the falling shelves, broke free the cobwebs
from the doorframe. Traced my eyes from
heaven to floor. Until today, I felt nothing
different than before, heard maybe a little less
highway & electric buzz at a great distance beyond
my yard. I think of summer cicadas, my childhood
locusts, their paper shells earthgrown & burstforth—
my first glimpse of plague, misunderstood—
& a humming. How I find myself—these days—I sweep
the patio free of peppercorn & scrambling
beetles. I have never lived so close to fields, never
known the insistence of bees who hive themselves
into the walls—how many times—this compassion?
Holy God, I am trying to unlearn my childhood
fear of desert spiders, even as I see the fangpierce
rise on my daughter’s arm, even as I pray
for this lonesoul who chants a requiem—I cannot
look away, cannot unknow & every death is mine
to hold, mine to witness, every apology at the cracking
of a carapace—for the cleanpeace of our home—this—
for the smoothblush of tender skin—How can I forget—
out here, merciless & inevitable—I’ve traded so much
concrete for dandelion and wild mustard, exhausted citronella
& peppermint—All this death & I can’t keep my bones
from weeping, my voice from aching, my hand
from censering all we primal critters back, back—
back to the earth. How do the Buddhists do it
in the wild—keep what grows from surrendering
even to the knuckled harbinger of fear—
How have we closed our eyes to the death
work of our kind—as though broken and beheaded
statues will ever outscream all these bodies?
Sherre Vernon is a seeker of a mystical grammar and a recipient of the Parent-Writer Fellowship at The Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She has two award-winning chapbooks: "Green Ink Wings" (fiction) and "The Name is Perilous" (poetry). Readers describe Sherre’s work as heartbreaking, richly layered, lyrical, and intelligent. To read more of her work visit www.sherrevernon.com/publications and tag her into conversation @sherrevernon.