Back End of January
By: Loukia Borrell
Voice of Eve
2018
We were in the back end of January
Colors muted, feeling bleak
I put my hope in a ladder-backed woodpecker
Its jolt of color, supple neck
Its beak needles the suet like a sewing machine
Its head nods at me with one eye
My lustrous youth has departed
Strength and stamina, frail.
I reached back often to remember
Being a young girl and using a Frisbee
To drink metallic-tasting water out of a hose
Cities I could never call home,
Towering palms, oceans
Everything is cherished, remembered fondly
As I begin to exit my precious middle years
I think of the gingko tree whose true shape is only seen
In winter years, when it is brittle and bare
