Caroline Picker
Image by Brian Beckwith from Unsplash
Caroline Picker (she/her) is a white queer femme parent, poet, community organizer, and fundraiser for movements for collective liberation living in Southern Vermont on Abenaki land. She’s committed to movement building, healing generational trauma, and imagining and fighting for a better future using all the tools available, including poems.
Stickney Brook, May 2022
There is the plunge,
and before the plunge—
shrieks spill
from either of our mouths.
Hands held eel-vise tight,
we bellow
into the deep cold pool.
You are almost six years old,
almost fish. Today,
you pretend at going under.
I am so greedy
for what the fact
of your life
does to my own.
Your chosen risks,
this sharp Vermont spring.
There is no such thing as stillness
and if there is, it’s death.
Once, baby you lay
bundled on my chest,
unknown to hemlocks,
snowmelt,
how the skin pops
with life after the numb.
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