Close Menu
  • Home
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Links
  • MER Journal
    • Latest Issue
    • Back Issues
    • Subscribe to MER!
  • MER ONLINE
    • MER Quarterly
    • MER Literary Folios
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Creative Prose
    • Essay
    • Craft
    • Interviews
    • Book Reviews
      • Bookshelf
    • Authors’ Notes
    • Art Gallery
      • Special – Hybrids
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Poem of the Month
    • Events
      • MER 18 Virtual Reading – Voices From HOME
    • Currents
      • Announcements
      • Highlights
  • Shop
    • All Issues
    • One Year Subscription
    • Two Year Subscription
  • Submit
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
MER – Mom Egg Review
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram YouTube Tumblr Threads
  • Home
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Links
  • MER Journal
    • Latest Issue
    • Back Issues
    • Subscribe to MER!
  • MER ONLINE
    • MER Quarterly
    • MER Literary Folios
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Creative Prose
    • Essay
    • Craft
    • Interviews
    • Book Reviews
      • Bookshelf
    • Authors’ Notes
    • Art Gallery
      • Special – Hybrids
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Poem of the Month
    • Events
      • MER 18 Virtual Reading – Voices From HOME
    • Currents
      • Announcements
      • Highlights
  • Shop
    • All Issues
    • One Year Subscription
    • Two Year Subscription
  • Submit
NEWSLETTER
MER – Mom Egg Review
You are at:Home » Poetry – Catherine Esposito Prescott

Poetry – Catherine Esposito Prescott

0
By Mom Egg Review on September 14, 2022 Poetry

Catherine Esposito Prescott

Black Creek Trail or Annual Bike Ride During the Pandemic When Our Usual Route Is Closed

New Year’s Day, 2021

 

Every vulture in Miami
congregates on the outskirts
of this landfill, and we ride
past their murder without speaking,
no, that is of crows, past their wake,
a wake of vultures, a wake which seems perfect
rather than prophetic—cloaked in
full black, full mourning regalia,
keeping vigil for this year—
or wake as in the thoughts
that simmer and spring me
into day before first light
or wake as in the Old English
wacu, the strong feminine,
to wake, to see.

Iguanas sit like sages
along the banks
of the polluted creek
which hugs the bike trail,
grown wiser from the ingestion
of toxins. This is the world
my boys will inherit, my boys,
almost full grown.
The trail takes a voyeur’s
path through neighborhood
backyards with smoking BBQ pits,
loudspeakers singing salsa
music, stacked plastic lawn chairs.

We pass perimeters of horse farms,
palm-tree farms, avocado farms
where egg-sized seeds turn
into towering trees.
We cross under highways,
over four-lane roads.
A homeless man tells my boys
love your mother first.
We bike through an encampment,
bus stops, condominiums,
a bird habitat designed with signs
adjacent to the creek
glittering with plastic bags.
A lone alligator appears and fades.
We have seen too much of each other.

At the end of the trail, we see
low-lying brush, no plant or tree
above eye level, yet thick with green.
The air is sweet, laced with baby’s breath,
scent of the untouched, of beginnings.

My boys check their phones and laugh
when I sigh, mocking me with their gravel-voices,
their five-o-clock shadows, their minds
planning the ride back to our car,
and their years beyond our home, all
within arms reach. What seemed distant
is here. We didn’t expect this view at the end—
not a clearing, not an emptiness,
no revelation to hold onto,
just resounding evidence
of seeds dropped into soil over and over.
We turn our bikes at the park’s boarded-up
welcome center and ride out.

Sunlight falls from the sky, pitches
toward tomorrow. The boys
speed ahead, then wait for me
at the first street crossing
not because they must,
but to make sure I am safe.

I ride in the current of their wake.

 


Catherine Esposito Prescott is the author of the chapbooks Maria Sings and The Living Ruin. Recent poems appear in EcoTheo Review, Mezzo Cammin, Northwest Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and West Trestle Review. Prescott is Co-founder and Editor in Chief of SWWIM Every Day. See http://catherineespositoprescott.com

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Previous ArticlePoetry – Maria S. Picone
Next Article Poetry – Anna Laura Reeve

Comments are closed.

May 8, 2025

Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree by Jennifer Martelli

May 8, 2025

Venus Anadyomene by Alyssa Sinclair

May 4, 2025

Seeking Spirit: A Vietnamese (non) Buddhist Memoir by Linda Trinh

May 4, 2025

Apartness by Judy Kronenfeld

May 4, 2025

Inconsolable Objects by Nancy Miller Gomez

May 4, 2025

All This Can Be True by Jen Michalski

May 4, 2025

Leafskin by Miranda Schmidt

May 1, 2025

MER Poem of the Month – May 2025

April 27, 2025

MER Submissions Are Open!

April 20, 2025

MER Reading a Mass Poetry in Salem MA

Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram YouTube Tumblr Threads
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Submit
  • Contact
MER - Mom Egg Review
PO Box 9037, Bardonia, NY 10954
Contact [email protected]

Copyright © 2025 MER and Mom Egg Review

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.