Know Me

I was once the tree you hammered shims into
so you could climb me like a ladder.

And I was the new strawberry, larvae white and hard,
and the bleeding-heart bush dropping valentines over your acreage.

I was the fox on whom you did not pull the trigger, the air trapped
beneath the frozen creek, and the broken milkweed’s white sap.

I did my growing far from you, arrived
late one summer, shirt like a tartan flag.

Come over. I said. Get to know me.

Now I am the bottle-blue boat, lost in the squall of you,
and the wave curling over your head.

 

 

Author of the article

Gretchen Marquette has served as the assistant poetry editor for Water~Stone Review, and as a first reader for the National Poetry Series. Her work has appeared in places such as Paper Darts, Harper's, and the Paris Review. Gretchen is a 2014 recipient of a Minnesota Emerging Writer Grant through the Loft Literary Center, and her first book, May Day, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2016. She currently lives in the Powderhorn neighborhood in south Minneapolis.