Fairy Tale
Sonnet About Trees, Sort Of
Floodplain
A plastic bag flaps, roadside trash
snagged on a guardrail, as we pass
an abandoned home, unable
to shake the omen of the crow
we did not see. Lost, wandering
a northern wood, we come across
countless boulders and believe them
bears crouching, monstrous paws poised.
Millennia have brought our brains
to this: narrate in a heartbeat
what we see, a draft to revise
once adrenaline’s rush recedes—
the way, kneeling before a king,
we tell ourselves a rightful heir
will return and deliver us
from the beast he has always been.
From my window, buds above the sidewalk offer
again unrest. Yellow-weighted branches bleed
on neighbors’ cars, windshields pollen-dusted, clumps
of it streaked across each driver’s field of vision.
See: I still don’t know what beauty is, can’t pluck
its note from the mix. I sit and watch, wait for buds
to blossom, leaves to set themselves in place, transfixed
by the grip such delicate design can hold
for a time, transfixed to know six months from now
they’ll stuff brown bags, feed backyard flames, clog gutters
to make puddles that freeze when frost touches down.
A bird settles on the sill and seems to look in
when it pecks the screen. I don’t know what’s worse: wanting
to say hello, or saying nothing at all.
Whatever wreckage
a river leaves
when it recedes
summer weeds conceal
and seeping mud
absorbs, rubble
hiding, always
waiting for storms
again, heavy
rains and broken
dam, to expose
a home so splinteredÂ
no story will
render it whole.
Brian Simoneau's first poetry collection is River Bound (C&R Press, 2014), and his poems have appeared in Boston Review, Boulevard, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, The Georgia Review, Mid-American Review, RHINO, Southern Indiana Review, Third Coast, and other journals. He grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, and now lives in Connecticut with his family.
