Tuesday Poem: From "The Grove In The Eye Of Light" poem cycle

Sycamore

the only other Irish girl
at St. Anthony’s was Mary Coates.

I remember her porcelain
freckled skin, like a forest floor
dappled with leaf shadows,
and eyes as blue and clear
as the sky the day she told me
what the f-word meant,
sending me out of my garden of bliss
with an earthquake of vulgar words
that spun me reeling away from her.

I wandered across the open playground
no longer at ease, groaned down dark corridors,
stood against brick walls, riddled
by that terrible knowledge.
Mary Coates, her grin a mile wide,
stalking me, a flasher
in a trench coat, detective cool.

She was out of my league.
I stayed as far away
from her as I could.