This palm is smooth. That one, when young,
is green as bamboo. Another palm’s fronds,
finished with living, fold down along the stem
and make habitat for small things. Collar
of the dead to house the living.
When fronds finally fall, the bracts
that held them serrate the stem’s silhouette.
Palms for palapas dry, not to a crisp
like oak leaves each November at home,
but fibrous. Intact. Yet will burn
like oak leaves burn. Will release
the record of hurricanes they bent through—
scent of rotting rats and sodden rugs.
Will burn with yellow flames
built from the yellow sun
whose own flames, now locked
into green cells and brown cells,
first drew these palms skyward.
Combustion’s roar will silence
wingbeat of raven and flycatcher.
Tonight, just winter’s half-moon lighting
the cats circling a palm. Whiskers twitch.
—
Kelly Lenox (The Brightest Rock, 2017) writes poetry and prose in Oregon. Her work appears in Poetry Daily, Black Warrior Review, Cold Mountain, RHINO, EcoTheo Review and elsewhere in the U.S. and Europe. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, with an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Kelly publishes “Mama Ephemera’s Muddy Feet” on Substack (kellylenox.substack.com) and is a science editor at the National Institutes of Health.
