Kari Gunter-Seymour: That Spot where Raccoon Creek Meets Brush Fork

I had all but forgotten that crazy quilt,

spread cock-eyed along a finger of grassy knob.

Mismatched fabrics, cartooned pickup trucks

leaping lanes, driving off the rick-racked edge.

I remember that navy blue swimsuit,

its quarter-sized polka dots. Your tanned legs

stretched long, sand stamped, damp curls

and a pin-up girl smile I treasure to this day,

the frenzy behind your dark eyes somehow

tempered. You said it was wild bird weather.

I’d have done with salt for sugar that day,

all the other days lost in fragments

and chaos, steeped in names of the dead

and other people’s dreams. I wish I could say

I lay your body under the honeysuckle

the day you crossed over, let vine and wisp

hang nectar all around you. Instead,

I’ll remember you laughed, with goldfinch

and chipping sparrows, on a blanket

of handstitched highways leading nowhere.

From A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen by Kari Gunter-Seymour (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2020).

Kari Gunter-Seymour is the Poet Laureate of Ohio.