PAD - Day 27 - Monster Poem

Anna Seichuk

Piotr Siedlecki

crabbing

in years to yet become they

would remember that day -

the girl cousins sat beading

in a small circle on the swept

wooden porch beside the empty

rocking chairs stringing from

a pile between them – picking

a few colored bits of glass at a time

the uncles, off to the far end,

sat and stood on, and against, the railing

with a little chew -munching silently,

with flat faces -even the youngest uncle

who just last night before it all, was finally

called out as he palmed a cheat card in the

dining room and would not leave the game

until they folded the table and the chairs and

walked off refusing to speak about it again

the aunts were thought to be in the wide

white channel of the kitchen, a few at the sink

washing fruit, others at the counter cutting

what would be bright salad served “later.”

But they weren’t –

They had untied their aprons and through

wavy glass watched their mother’s apple

blossom tree where their only son, a small

bright boy of nearly eight scrabbled himself

like a land-locked crab up into a bower of

white petals and picked a lapful of small

perfect green apples - just as a sigh ran from

Mother’s bedroom above and down the steps

on light slippered feet just ahead of the beastly

thing lumbering behind her, as one, they heard

that lyric laugh of their childhood, and knew

without need of trudging up the stairs to stare with

reddened eyes at her husk, that she had outrun the

pinchers of the bulging eyed Cancer crab –

a wafted wisp of her lilac scent lingering

about them all in a forever embrace as

the kitchen screen door slammed gently,

lovingly, firmly closed behind her irrevocable

release into the soft summer wind  

~