UNDERGROWTH

Susan Smith Nash

 

 

Where are we, amidst these memories?

Events drape themselves upon every experience,

like Spanish moss --

Ghosts hanging from old Carolina’s live oaks –

 

If only we could speak

the language of shared memory, like limbs snapping

 

Sweet syllables, of our

days lived, and months spent after,

longed for 

 

making

shadows in the daylight.

 

Work and obligation

Those murky swamps around our roots

 

Danger lies not in the poison of a snake

or some reptilian hunger –

 

But in our unspoken words

hanging from time

ghostly presences in our hearts

spectators to our own silences.