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Poetry | September 2019

Milkweed

By Kathryn Petruccelli

My son skips ahead of me on the path
chasing down milkweed fluff
through oak leaves.

What is it called?–
the seed carried aloft by the ephemeral?
Shall I name it newly here

to convey a thing

less than wing, jellyfish
in the wrong element, a tangle
of would-be bodies,
scarves of nothing?

Or that boy, vanishing from my sight
down the trail, at times too far to call,
reappearing–a sleeve of blue among the weeds,
invisible again a moment after.

He loses the wild seed as it sails
toward sky, that for all his pursuit
through the poison ivy
easily floats off into the beyond.

He has it;     now not.

He recaptures it;
it slips out again.

A name, yes, for the bit of silk
that spins in the wind–
so when my eyes can no longer make it out
against the clouds, I might still hold
on my tongue what was.

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