Author’s Note: As a girl, I made frequent canoe trips to this pond with my parents. Decades later, a spontaneous excursion with my grown sons left impressions that reverberated with surprising intensity. And yet, it was such a small moment. What act—an act of observation or a suspension of knowing—opens the door?
Still Life
My son who is now a man suns
stork-like on a log, one leg dangling
over water—he is driftwood, bleached
clean. There is swimming in the lily
pads, and drying with tiny towels,
the grit of sand to wipe away
before the socks. A day that slingshots
through my reckoning and lodges
somewhere, behind—I look down
on a mosaic of black mussels
nestled in the shoals and find
strangers in the grown bodies
of sons. Next time there may be
grasses. Rain. A picnic of plums.
⧫
Kathryn Weld is a professor of mathematics at Manhattan College. Her writing has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Midwest Quarterly, Southeast Review, , Cortlandt Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Connotations Press, Still, the Journal, and others. She published a chapbook in 2019, Waking Light (Kattywompus Press). Website: Manhattan.edu/campus-directory/kathryn.weld.
Delmarva Review publishes evocative new poetry and prose selected from thousands of submissions annually. Designed to encourage outstanding writing, the literary journal is nonprofit and independent. Financial support is from tax-deductible contributions, sales, and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: DelmarvaReview.org.
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