Hogplum Heaven

Abstract

Hogplum Heaven Marion Bethel (bio) You strike a pose vulnerable and tough leafless and laden a wiry warted silhouette of a child’s nightmare. I planted your branch to anchor my childhood in this garden of rocks as barren as your seed. You bring abundant life. I watch my daughter climbing hardheaded and fearless She too is impatient for barely yellow skin dipped in salt. I see the orange-yellow madness of a sun’s slim fingers mostly stroke and sometimes torch your naked skin. There was danger in childtime even in your green shade. Two sassy wasps told me so kissing the yellow green fever in my climbing eyes. Yet I parade the faith the safety of those years like a pentecostalist on the roadway to a chilly baptism. [End Page 933] With no whisper of exhaustion your season done you yield to the seagrape dressing yourself in crinolines leafy green. Marion Bethel Marion Bethel has published in The Massachusetts Review, River City, and other literary journals. In 1991, she was awarded the James Michener Fellowship at the University of Miami and, in 1994, the Casa de las Americas Prize for Guanahani, My Love, a book of poems. Copyright © 1996 Charles H. Rowell