Donna H. DiCello
Understory
Donna H. DiCello
Issue 58, Autumn 2019
The heart of another is a dark forest.
--Willa Cather
Secrets like fiddleheads
unfurled the year I turned eight--
cousin no longer, now sister,
twinning in the eyes,
broad strokes of olive skin--
testament to my father’s
first marriage, another life.
This knowing both shame
and delight, my mother
was not the first, nor I.
My father’s crinkled laugh
around her mouth, her nose,
evidence of their undone history
secret and dank,
like the forest floor,
green shoots pushing towards
sunlight, the strain of trees
in the wind, holding their roots.
Her children grew, as did
our father’s silence;
moss grown thick to hide
the turns of earth, years
becoming markers of what
could not be said.
Dreams conveyed
our primordial connection,
trees whispering
in lost tongues, the language
of longing where roots entwine,
shifting the landscape.
I tried to read the map
of hearts; one, I loved most,
the other, adrift, a milkweed,
pulsing on a waft of breeze
and dappled light, each one of us
trying to nestle
into a cradle of pine.