The child can’t do a cartwheel.
She can do a headstand, a handstand,
but a cartwheel needs momentum, a swinging centre
of gravity. The child doesn’t know
momentum, centres, gravity.
She blames her mother’s
ski-slope lawn, fenced off in the middle
of a hillside farm. Far below the river lurks
among giant trees. Far above is the boundary fence
and the forested climb she completed once
to peep at the house on top. Her father calls
its owner mad. When she does a handstand
the child doesn’t think of the river,
the trees, the mountain, the madman.
She thinks green blades,
soft-sharp, flattening
under fingers. Ants. Beetles.
Her father mows the grass
infrequently. It spreads thick runners, yellow-white,
with bright chlorophyll arrowheads. Her father talks
war at them, but he’s not a fighter. The child
can do a headstand, a handstand
but never thinks to think
if I can do that
I can turn a cartwheel. A cartwheel is only
a moving handstand. At school she sees the others
cartwheeling freely on the flat lawns.
Her father is the gardener. He keeps it
well, wanders in it like Wittgenstein. The others
make fun of him. The child watches
their cartwheels. Asks. One, two,
three, they laugh. But the child is not co-
ordinated. She doesn’t have her count
together. The numbers come
in space, away
from tummy, hips,
knees. She tries again. Runs,
throws her hands down
to the grass, heaves her bottom over.
It isn’t a cartwheel.
Never that flinging feeling.
Her legs will not go up and over. It needs
more force, she thinks.
Runs faster, heaves harder.
It never works.
Never at school
on the flat lawns in front
of everyone. Never on the scraggy
home slope, where the shape of things pulls her down,
away from the mountain and the madman’s house,
down, down to the river,
and her mother is framed in the kitchen window
saying Be careful! Oh, do
be careful!
First published in The High Window 8, Winter 2017
From A coat of ashes
Jackson 