The Friday Poem on 01/03/2024
Sharon Black’s poem captures something of the strange limbo of the teenage years, when so much lies ahead but one hardly knows where to start. The poem full of sensual delights – the bright colours of the flowers, the smell of cut grass – but there’s also a frisson of danger in the teeth of the serrated spoon and the poisonous rhododendron flowers. There are hints that the family dynamic is difficult, but the narrator also seems to have some ambivalence about growing up. Black creates a feeling of frustration or untapped energy through her use of short lines and repetition – we want her narrator to jump off that swing and take off! What is she saying? Remember this time when we were full of potential, and never forget to get out and experience life in all its glory, perhaps.
Oh, someday, girl, I don’t know when
The swing-seat is shaded
by hanging rhododendrons
whose leaves and flowers
are poisonous. My father tips the cuttings,
throws handfuls of lush green
on the compost heap. I’m fifteen,
have just turned down a ticket
to see Springsteen. I pick
at the scab on my knee,
swing and dream, swing and dream,
scrape slivers
of frozen orange from a mug
with a serrated grapefruit spoon
that bares its teeth. One day
I will say Yes to everything.
Rhododendrons spread by prolific seeding,
are hard to eradicate.
I don’t know much but my body knows
if I stay here I will die.
No one teaches this at school.
My father throws his temper
to the ground, scrapes soil from his shoes,
whirls into the kitchen
to tell my mother some new truth
that must be stamped out.
With each swing, the smell of cut grass.
The toxins in rhododendron nectar
don’t harm bumblebees. At school I am
the fastest runner, thinnest girl;
will not eat anything sweet.
I swing and dream
below the bright pink canopy.
If a flower falls, it falls whole
without letting go of its petals.
I catch one in my mouth.
My body tells me everything.
I will not wither. I am fifteen and
the bell-shaped flowers hide
what grows beneath. They swing
and dream, swing and dream all summer.
