Dear Acorn
How droll, to wear a thatch-work cap
in your unmade bed, half-strewn
with crumpled leaves. Were you
your mother’s favorite,
or a shrug, earthward, tumbled
between the seasonal cleave
and leaving? Huzzah,
feral tickle of taproot, encoded
with primeval fizz! Little scuffed nut,
your essential self, denuded,
rockets forth—one shoot
amid the forest graveclothes,
as if all you are may yet erupt,
may devolve or burgeon, dazed
as a spindle splintering
into rungs, arms and legs,
brash with sap, dreaming
the chair, turned against
each year’s lathe,
like any artisan, becoming all throne.
Laurie Klein is the author of Where the Sky Opens and Bodies of Water, Bodies of Flesh. Read more.
Laurie Klein’s “Dear Acorn” previously appeared in Vita Poetica.