Across Arcola Creek,
a Shadow Garden perches on the bank,
waiting for a ten-year-old
to bring it light and love.

The product of one woman’s lazy summer
decades ago,
its rose beds are alone now,
long-since abandoned.

Swallowed by dense thickets,
pummeled by swaggering firs and Maple thugs,
strangled by roving fingers of ivy,
its pale leaves struggle for sun and
choked canes fight for breath.

Yet, its vibrant roots stretch through rich soil,
willing to support rebirth overhead,
to celebrate beauty never completely destroyed.

Ghostly outlines of winding paths,
their stones now moss-crusted
and buried under the compost of decades-old decay,
whisper an invitation to the little girl seeking escape
from her own lazy summer.

The Shadow Garden, in its verdant prison,
opens to her, promising renewed life and joy
for both of them.

© Laura Abbott

Burnished gold strands
crested my head,
contorted and coiled,
clamped under pins.
The top knot was my mother’s
notion, her identity
projected onto me,
in a world where she
had none of her own.

“Your hair needs height,
dear,” she’d say.
“With that long nose and
pointed chin, your coiffure
should soften the face.
If you don’t want to look
common and ordinary, that is.”

I had no muscle to fight
her throttling authority.
Set apart from a child’s world
demanding conformity,
I was her pawn.
The top knot was her brand.

The tresses confined inside her invention
unwound only briefly,
each morning.
Her manicured fingers yanked the pins
from the snarled tangle.
Her brush ripped through my
twisted hair, forcing
a painful convention.
A bitter irony, that, when her
goal was to set me apart
from the “others.”

I’d eye the bedraggled clump with
longing, wishing to free its strands
forever–allow them to float
down my back in a
natural state, releasing me from
the hideous distinction that
doomed my school days.

But, I was trapped,
cringing under the curled wad.
A mother jailor had imposed
a sentence I would spend
years escaping.

© Laura Abbott

With hooded eyes and winks of wings,
kestral sentries crest the wind,
propelled by twilight thermals
of Fredericksburg’s dead.

High-flying phantoms,
freed from earthly bonds,
meet these carrion hosts.
Soaring to spirit, they are
hatchlings testing their wings,
leaving behind nameless markers,
now slivers of white.

Feathered whispers hint
heroic gasps,
blue-coated scavengers
and predators of gray,
soil scratched bloody
and shrapnel claws shredding
dreams’ downy nests.

Hawk-eyed sentinels soar serene,
their tight turns of war
loosened by time.
Peace has blunted
mortal talons.
Hunter and hunted
flock as one.

And Fredericksburg graves
stretch cold and silent across
grass-knotted ground.
While falcons drift
on War’s fading breath.

© Laura Abbott

It is a gift from God, my parents told me,
the pure tones of my singing voice,
brushing the ceiling of a range,
much higher than others can boast.

I wondered how a cleft palate could be but a curse.
Yet the contorted hollow inside my mouth
helped produce the sound, the joyful humming
that soothed a spirit scarred by doctors.

I couldn’t keep this magic to myself.
Ego lured me away from private bliss.
It was a flickering flame I had to touch,
this craving for acclaim.

My teachers honed and shaped me.
A soprano voice grew strong, pure-blooded,
three octaves in a coloratura stream
flowing from an endless well of talent.

My better judgment screamed a warning
about the stigmata, the shameful brand.
An inner battle raged and festered,
tension tightened, about to snap.

Across recital footlights, the struggle ended,
in Severance Hall packed with people,
their mocking faces edged the void
between aloof applause and private angst.

Disgust pried open my rebuilt mouth,
outlined each notch in my jagged palate.
My high C-note cracked and faltered,
a perfect mirror, now warped with shame.

Sometimes my compulsions overwhelm my stigma.
I squeak out a church service anthem or two.
Hints of past glory soar in a country chapel,
flying free from deformity hovering nearby.

But most days are wrapped in dreams
strangled before they were allowed to breathe.
I choke on passion never climaxed,
my talent muted, silent as the grave.

© Laura Abbott

Apple orchard ancients
pruned in parade rest rows,
roost for rowdy crows
crying in sun-dappled air.

Speckled splintered bark
circles stalwart trunks
rising over roots
dug deep as razor claws
cleaving rot-rich ground.

In tangled twists
of breeze-bangled branches,
lacey leafy fans
soothe searing summer heat,
and canopied secrets sway.

Fleshy fruit’s blushing skin
caresses pungent pulp,
its spicy incense spreads,
smearing August steam.

And overloaded fruit
overcooks to bursting,
spoiled bruises budding
swarming maggot blossoms.

© Laura Abbott