she is such a tiny bud, raw
with winter’s scrubbed potential, born to high winds
to parents of dune thistle
grandparents of red baneberry
lost in a rough country of ancestry
not recognizing oak from aspen
from elder
i want to bring her baskets of our fruit
crops of blackberries or little wild strawberries just plump enough
to crush between teeth, to burst open and stain the lips
i want them tart with her lineage,
of who she was grown to be
of how she was rooted a thousand years ago
and i am no master gardener
unskilled at pruning or coaxing bud to blossom,
i can’t tell sly weed from straining sapling
except for this one
glorious shoot
so go ahead, dance, little one
let your bare toes take root everywhere they will,
let the wind shake loose your laughter
like seeds
and let it
settle, fatten, sprout,
and seek new sun
this is no longer
my harvest
© 2019 R.B. Simon
First appeared in May 2020 Issue of Literary Mama; Winner of the Arts & Literary Laboratory ALL Favorites Prize 2021.
R.B. Simon (she/her) is a queer, black, fat, disabled poet and Managing Editor at Harbor Editions. R.B.’s work has found homes in pacificREVIEW, The Coop, Strange Horizons, Literary Mama, CALYX, Obsidian, Emerge Literary Journal, and West Trestle Review. Her work has been a finalist for numerous prizes (Julia Darling Memorial Prize, Crosswinds Poetry Prize, Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize, and Unleash Book Award to name a few) and was the winner of the 2023 Zoyer Zyndel Poetry Prize. Her full-length collection, Not Just the Fire, was released March 2023 from Cornerstone Press. Her next collection, Bird Bone Blood is forthcoming in early 2025 (Milk & Cake Press). She is currently living in Madison, WI with her spouse and young daughter.
