And in the rain glazed wood—always just off the path

What remains?

Amongst the organic ground swell—

Unfurling with the he-fiddled-with-me-ferns

It calls to the synthetic dog-walkers

(the cyclists—sausages strung in links—pedal past too fast

and all the joggers are deaf)

“Look I have always been here taking up the negative space next to the broken wheelbarrow and skunk cabbage to mask the rot. Maybe you should have tended me—helped me grow—and found out what I looked like on the insides

without an autopsy…”

Adele Evershed was born in Wales and has lived in Hong Kong and Singapore before settling in Connecticut. Her prose and poetry have been published in over a hundred journals and anthologies such as Wales Haiku Journal, Grey Sparrow Journal, Presence, Tofu Ink Arts Press, Shot Glass Journal, and Hole in the Head Review. Adele has recently been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net for poetry, and her first poetry chapbook, Turbulence in Small Places will be published next year by Finishing Line Press.

 Find her on Twitter @AdLibby1

And on Instagram-ad_libby