I Have Sprouted Antenna

Dear Mary,

I hope this poem can portray my love and appreciation of you and your words more accurately than my prose. 
Forever an inspiration, forever in my thoughts, 
-Amanda Michelle Holt

Reading Mary Oliver

I.

The den fills

With cricket-stutter,

They struggle with their own names

Over and over

as I begin.

I have swathed myself in Mom’s duvet,

Yellow as fern fronds

over-watered. 

II.

She wafts in without knocking,

muddies the tile with drought-dust,

pine-ash.

I am naked now.

Bathing.

She does not stand over me,

But kneels--

I hear her humming

Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,

As she lifts the rag,

Melts the makeup into tar creeks

On my cheeks.

“Let them stay.” She says.

III.

I have sprouted antenna.

I touch everything with them,

Twine-tickle every part of myself.

I rub my new limbs together,

twitter the scherzo

from Mahler’s 6^th. 

Before she leaves,

She kisses my breast,

Says, “This is what the branch feels

When it lets go

Of the last dangling leaf.”