I smell gardenias when I think of warmth,
feel smooth, hardwood under still new feet
how little hands can scale old
umbrella trees like that iguana
castaway one morning after a hurricane
I spotted arching up into the leaves
and little feet swinging in the air:
how I hid a small cache of treasure
perched on a branch
just like him/
shiny plastics from my costume
I wore during the warm, Miami nights
twirling and dancing in parades
flipping on the black asphalt,
sometimes landing on my knees still,
and unconcerned I’d collect the
shiny stones that fell off and
put them in the tree hole somewhere
high up- reminded of how I could shine
so bright when I moved quickly,
how people watched
entranced with my spinning.
One evening after dark
I played on the sidewalk on my own
an only child and wildly imaginative
and spotted the cactuses slowly opening their flowers
like they did every night: a night-blooming
cereus that I went over to put a tiny lizard,
a green anole, on its topmost point
of green just above the little spike
how it launched itself into the darkness
between itself and the ground way below-
my alarm and wonder at his tiny bounce
before he ran. What if, he had stayed
atop the blooms having been placed
so safely by my hand,
where the stars above were now closer
and the grass that usually towered, tiny
and inconsequential? And, I hoped
it would feel freedom like I did
up in my tree, free from all
the must-dos and perfection
the pressure to remain small
but be admirable. I found myself
closer to myself in every treetop
or perched on a floating log
in the partially frozen alpine lake
one spring or stepping further
into the warm waves of the Atlantic
where all that is heard now
is time and my own heart.
In Due Proportion 