"Whimsy", "Offshoots", "Turn Up" & "First Cousin" by Susan Shea

Whimsy

The day I saw the life-like

parrot swaying on a string

in front of your kitchen window

I knew you had made a pivot

in the cage that trapped 

your hardness

now headed for fresh air,

lighter, you offered me a

gingerbread-man cookie

letting me believe you

were feeling powerful

telling me you could

get a head on a plate

if you wanted to

as you sat smiling

next to your prayer plant

 Offshoots

I am most comfortable staying behind the lens

looking to take just a second of time for one 

picture, one frame taken in an open meadow

that keeps teaching me 

I will be surprised by what appears after one click 

when it is time for me to look at the finished piece

when I find rays of light I didn't see with my eyes

go full spectrum, out of nowhere, illuminating crevices

when a blur of cloud formations come to reveal

a window in the blue where a lit-up man sits

with his arms spread out over this kingdom

reminding me that even when I am out of sight

trying to hide in stillness, trying to avoid hard doors 

that may slam in my face, nature will open

will speak out loud through closed spaces

bountiful eyes share with the poor

from fields of view in the making

Turn Up

I send you a picture of a rutabaga

while you are hiking 

with a message that says

the rutabaga and I love you

you call me instantly

because it is just what we needed

I thank the farmer who planted

the rutabaga, who helped 

us harvest our urgency

First Cousin

Only six years older than me

you seemed to be so much wiser

you were trusted to take me

to the playground, so we could

go on the seesaw up and down

I wanted to be as pretty as you

I wanted to put my sneakers

aside, be shiny in patent leather

like you, until you jumped off

while I was smiling high in the sky

making me fall hard sideways 

onto the cracked pavement

catching only the look in your eye

that frightened me more than 

the pain on my face

I told no one when we went home

as though I seemed to know it was

safer to calm myself than to

speak of this new found lowdown

Susan Shea is a retired school psychologist who was raised in New York City, and now lives in a forest in Pennsylvania.  Since she has returned to writing poetry this year, her poems have been accepted by a few dozen publications, including Across the Margin, Vita Poetica, Ekstasis, Persimmon Tree Literary Magazine,  and The Avalon Literary Review, as well as three anthologies. Susan is so happy to wake up every morning knowing she now has the time to write poetry.