Serpentine

 I had just an hour of darkness left 

 to slip out, past the cats 

dreaming on the stairs, and feel my way 

  along the outdoor wall, 

  

and  

 step along the stone path to the car, 

slide my bag in back, 

  then hoist up my guitar. 

  

Soon enough, the car died, 

and I rolled it over a riverbank, 

all my papers and stuff inside— 

  and kept moving as it sank. 

  

I left the kids behind, their phones, jokes, and cigarettes, 

  my paintings, clocks, and trunk of dresses. 

  

 I left him behind, too, with books I bought 

 and he read   

on a hot beach, our pretend homestead, 

  

 like shelters I created playing Forest and Prairie, my favorite

childhood games. 

 

For a couple of days, I drifted over fields, stone walls, gates, 

 

dipping into bright gardens. 

 Peony, bumblebee, even they were part of me.   

 Pale grasses lay flat as a gold 

 sheet.

Skimming a grove of oak and birches molting in a light rain, 

  needles dropping from knitted evergreens. 

  

After this, what remains: 

 a mulch, a muddy  

soup  

and soon,  

no trace of me, no flesh, no bone,  

 silhouette or shadow, no.   

What used to be in moss, dark green, is 

  

serpentine— 

  

 supple mineral seeping back into the ground. 

 

About the Poem

I set out to write about the lure of escape from possessions and responsibilities, and how powerful it  can be to unburden and simplify. The narrator moves from domestic life and its trappings to nature and eventually ends up as an essence, a mineral. I tried to get a lot of music into the poem with  internal rhymes. Also, I played with the lineation to make it a bit impressionistic, literally lighter with  more white space but also figuratively, with the lines mimicking a process of letting go.  

 

About the Poet

Barbara O’Dair graduated from The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College in poetry.  Her work was selected by the late Thomas Lux as winner of Mudfish 9’s poetry contest, and she was  nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2022. Her poetry has been published in Alaska Quarterly, Lips,  MER, Nerve, Presence, Red Wheelbarrow, Sycamore Review, West Branch, and Wisconsin Review, among  others. She is the editor of Trouble Girls: The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock and Caught Looking:  Feminism, Censorship, and Pornography. Her essays and criticism have appeared in Rolling Stone, Salon, Semiotexte, More, The New York Times, Village Voice, and other publications and in many anthologies.  She has four young adult children and lives in Montclair, NJ, with her husband.