Have you ever wanted, by Elizabeth Burnside

Prentiss Dow, circa 1955. Family photograph of the poet.

​Have you ever wanted
 
to rise up on the balls of your feet lengthen
your arms and dive through silken air
backward in time curling at the last 
minute to land feet first?
 
toes then arches then ankles would sink
through sunbaked sand to tickle
at the timeless cool lying just below 
the surface your scratch on the
time-space continuum an unimportant
glitch in the geologic span of beach sands
 
there you might find your mother
barefoot on the beach posing for a picture
her face alight hands curled coquettishly 
at her chin her waist cinched in
an emphatic silver buckle
 
you might put your arm around her shoulders
and laugh and soak in the sameness
of your bodily frames your interchangeable 
parts you might drink in the scent of her skin 
salty sandy in the mexican sun
 
you might ask to meet her 
friend you might laugh some more giddy and 
weep and wonder at how you can be so close in
and so far away and know her so little and so much

Elizabeth Burnside
​
Elizabeth Burnside lives in Georgia and works in higher education.  Her recent poems have been published in the I-70 Review and Fourth River.  She finds herself returning to themes of memory and landscape in her writing.