Spring Ephemeral/s
It’s all talking, out
here in the forest. Frilled
oak catkins lifting
their green skirts, talking
to wind, wind making
letters Indigo buntings
unravel with their wings, bees
addressing with sweetness
the starry white blossoms
on the pin cherries. I
tried talking to my gender
but she didn’t want to have
a conversation. Open
all the closed stones.
Backfill the wreckage with
petals. How small we are,
with our books & windows.
In botany, a flower with both
male & female parts is
called a perfect flower.
Trees have sex with wind
& moths & wasps & beetles &
each other. In spring
their pollen drenches
sidewalks & porches & ponds
& the tops of my feet &
the tender skin along
my shoulders that no one
ever touches. All
spring trees touch me, invite me
into the conversation they’re
having about staying alive.
I mostly ignore my body until
I enter a tree’s corona where
my nakedness doesn’t feel
like a collapsing galaxy. Lilacs
& shadbush have perfect
flowers. Redbud, crabapple,
winterberry, witch hazel—oh perfect
flowers, riddle me & spell me
to bloom. I brought my gender
a bouquet of beech twigs, buds
unfurling all fluttery & soft, and I think
it piqued his interest.
We put so much into the ground
without considering the ground’s
capacity for pain. In the forest
talking tethers the future to
the present. I asked my gender
if they wanted a break from
all the infinities they tend to,
but they were buried in the folds
of a flowering dogwood
and didn’t hear me. So let
the leaves tumble. Erupt
the whistling hillsides. Trees
have sex in the unflinching
open under starlight & moonlight
& all the lights & all the skies
which means they never
learned to hide their desires
or their bodies. It doesn’t
mean they don’t have secrets.
I told my gender what I wanted.
I told my gender my name
was flowers. My gender
walked me into
the forest and let me go.
Laura Sackton (she/her) is a queer poet from the Boston suburbs who lives and writes in rural Western Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in West Branch, Terrain.org, Tampa Review, and elsewhere. She's known around the internet as a champion of earnestness.