Poetry by Carole Greenfield
Small children do not wait for pain
to make a lasting mark. They give fair warning;
we have time to wipe off tears, mop up trouble,
kiss a bruise, pronounce it healed.
But love leaves an impression that won’t be kissed
away. An imprint left in something soft hardens
and congeals. What passed through fire once
is tempered, then annealed.
Children trace their fingers over fossils, guess
at what’s revealed: evidence of ridges, indentations,
life long over, heart’s rush sealed.
Trace fossils: fossils in which evidence of organisms, rather than the organisms themselves, are preserved.
Carole Greenfield grew up in Colombia and lives in Massachusetts, where she teaches at a public elementary school. In the last century, her work appeared in Red Dancefloor, Gulfstream and The Sow’s Ear.
