Before a Summer Thunderstorm
The world is mostly water,
you think as you walk outside
headed for the car with a cup
of coffee and alist of errands.
The lightning flashes, rumble
of thunder takes four counts to
reach you, but the trees do
a rumba in air. No one will pay
you to stop, to watch, to imagine
a time before motor boats and
submarines. You sit anyway,
arms wrapped around your knees.
Forget grass stains on your pants;
this wind could take you and
break you like plastic toys.
Where did we get the idea that
we have control of anything?
The leaves seem to dance like
seaweed under water. We are
bottom feeders in the forests,
slow, small, and have insatiable
fire instincts. maybe the lids
of our eyes are surfaces
of water. When we sleep, we see
the deep, roam the stars. You
realize time is passing, your errands
waiting, coffee cooling. If we slow
down enough, will time reverse?
You pick up your coffee and head
to the car. Above, leaves make their
music. The water above glows hot.
To My Daughter at 12 in Vietnam
When I die, there's nothing
that would save me like
that night you cried into my lap
over the Hill Tribe girls--
We'd traveled ten hours north
on old trains from Hanoi
into steep green mountains,
and met girls your age
who'd never seen a plane or
lived with running water.
They are so poor, you said,
they have nothing. But
they still give you things.
I stroked your hair and let
the Vietnamese karaoke
from the bar across the alley
drink in our room. That night,
you fell asleep to light rain
on your face. In the morning,
I asked you if lightning struck
your dreams. In your half-waking
eyes, as if I were still the world,
you wrapped me in your arms.
Mary Jane Ryals is the author of The Moving Waters, a poetry collection, and the novel Cookie and me, both from Kitsune Books. Cookie & Me, which won a Bronze Medal in the Florida Book Awards, tells the story of a cross-racial friendship in the 1960's in the deep south. Ryals, who currently teaches at Warren Wilson College in Asheveille, NC, is poet laureate of the Big Bend of Florida. Along with her husband Michael Trammell, she edits Apalachee Review.