Longleaf Pine Bark

This old-growth longleaf — twelve feet
in circumference — and what bark —
corrugated fingers linked — a completed
jig-saw — each flake part of a whole,
yet still separate — sticky with
resin — like family.

Now the turpentine breeze raises
the few blond hairs left waiting
at the bus-stop of my forearm — the
sand-variegated bark taking me
back to our last beach vacation
on Tybee Island — the girls sixteen
and twenty — the iodine-sweet
air of May, and the years ahead —
lipstick on our smiles.

Gary D. Grossman
Verse-Virtual, January 2023