After a morning argument, we take our

marriage into the woodlands.  A staggart

steps into place next to a storm-wrecked

tree, branches splintered and soundless.

We spot two deer floss through tight woods,

instinct and elegance against our boy of ten

in blue, puffed-down jacket undone and

flapping.  He makes his way in a tangled

tan hayfield; walking on the bottom of a bowl

of ocean, without the ocean, he said.  Later,

floating sunshine lights up his translucent

ear auricle.  Beyond him, past the sticks

he snapped, an oval pond steadies its layer

of scalded-milk muck.  Our anger loses

momentum in this buoyant forest, slowed

by racing bucks flush against what’s tender.

—

Marjorie S. Thomsen is from Richmond, Virginia and currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  She recently started submitting her poetry; her work has appeared in Halfway Down the Stairs and contemporary haibun online.