Herbarium
Molly Kugel
Why do you keep returning,
revenant, reckless, and barefoot?
It is green and the greenest.
It is a good thing tried hard,
something other people doubted
of you or a child’s last call to his mother,
but this time she knows the way.
It is near again.
It is all the lost things:
the flower bracelet for your birthday,
dropped by the main line train station,
first dances on gravel, car radios
and open car doors and starlight
and moon’s light and light, dying and tender.
Look, everything is glowing:
the pachysandra, grape hyacinth,
leaves of maple tree, you had trouble
climbing and your mother will call you
for dinner soon, but for now
the backyard is quiet and your knees
are young and it will be summer now.
No one will question where the years
have gone—no one will
know the difference.
Molly Kugel
Molly Kugel is the author of the chapbook, The Forest of the Suburbs (Five Oaks 2015). Her poems have appeared most recently in CALYX, Mid-American Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, Subtropics, and Gold Wake Live. She is a PhD candidate in Literary Studies at the University of Denver.