Beasts of Wilmette

By Emily Cooper

 

A paste of dirt and rainwater
smeared on smooth cheeks.
Cakes of muck in our hands.
Clover stems woven flat are pressed between palms
and hurled into the air while their tiny little heads
lay tucked behind our ears.
 
Birch and oak and maple wave over our wildling rituals.
The skull of an acorn cracked, innards spat out
are ground with heels back into the earth.
Milkweeds lure the butterflies to feast and the cattails
on the dunes hail high, thin white clouds
streaking over the blue-green waves.
 
How we love the world to be clawed up
by our fingernails and stuck there—
twenty dark-realm crescent moons.
How we love to tear the bark as we climb and
pluck the golden tops of weeds and smear them
across our inner forearms, to stain.
 
Wild, loose, unstoppable.
How I miss this now that the days are long and
I’m so prim and cleanly—
so utterly tame and exhausted— 
now that everything and everyone
has its place.