Anna Laura Reeve

Pivoting in Appalachia

Through shaded classroom windows can I see
red and sugar maple inflorescence
tasseling high above drifts of cherry
      and saucer magnolia scurf.

Burnished carmine whirligigs on strings,
chartreuse pedicels growing yellow
           with pollen--

                 millions of tiny parts confusing the eye at a distance;
                         nearer, unspooling like fractals.

Two more days till the end of March
and the cracking of the chocolate egg
               that will drip with caramel, covering
                                                 all our sins. It is Lent,

                         but Southern Appalachia has always observed
                  with ireless green grass
and glistering fleshy petals, sepals cracked
                                 and spread eagle.

Not even once
have I heard my Montessori preschoolers told
   that they have sinful hearts and dirty
                                                        bodies.

Not once has a teacher asked them to imagine
being on fire with no mothers to help them,

                                          nor that a bearded man in a picture
          is the only one who can save them
                                                                              from a place
where they are alone with a bad man          with horns.

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Anna Laura Reeve is a poet living and gardening near the Tennessee Overhill region, historic land of the Eastern Cherokee. She’s working on her first poetry collection. Previous work of hers has appeared or is forthcoming in Canary, The Trumpeter, The Racket, Cutthroat, and Fourteen Hills, and others. Read more: annalaurareeve.com