Mercies

ocean aches an ankle bone calling the cold for what it is:
a quick death,     unless you are close enough to shore     unless you are still in the liminal space
between humans and their boats     and the wild wideness
an ankle bone knows how small it is      how not-wild      thin and caught in the throat
of a seabird      angry eyes and fuchsia mouth blooming to the bone-blue
sky         and on a summer morning with little feet chubby        little ankles scamping
over warm sand to scoop a pailful of coldache water      to salt the rainbow-sided fish
found in a sea-leaving tide puddle:      the little fish had already thought
it lost its wild       warming, as it was, in the sun—       seabird overhead
spied it with one    shoreline eye       fish body scrimping    thin puddle-water      seabird reeled
            for the gulp,     ready:
until the small child scooped with unwild pail     and danced that wee fishy
back down to the cold       green-on-the-edges,     center-black body
of water and that fish     quickened in the cold        not death to her      scamper little toes back
shrieking to sun

Moth

In the summer it never got dark until long after the grownups went to bed.
We ran in distilled twilight down hallways, barefoot nightgowns rustling calves
while the grownups slept open-mouthed, thrown upon the couches in the cooling air.
Outside, it always seemed lighter. The brown grass burnt itself and scratched
at the bone above our ankles. Burrs caught in the nightgown hems. Never make a crown of burrs,
we reminded each other. There was always a mourning dove measuring out the sounds,
conductor or metronome against a fabric of strings: birds, bugs, frogs all blending into
one great noise that lifted with the heat, leaving our shoulders brilliantly skinned
against the dark. If the moon rose, it winked at us. We were sure
the mourning dove was calling for our deaths.
If our parents dreamed, we didn’t know it.

Megan Leonard is a mad, sick, mother of four who lives on the coast of New Hampshire. Her books include book of lullabies (Milk & Cake Press, 2020) and Larkspur Queen (Nightingale & Sparrow Press, 2023).

Published October 1 2022