Yellow Arrow Vignette | BLAZE
A Thing I Can’t Find Words for Lately
Rebecca Brock
After “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver and “Second Coming” by William B. Yeats
My child takes himself so seriously
to the local skate park
where he uses the animal of his body
to focus and attune to gravity
and this planet—
joy is like that.
Often, I can’t watch.
But I bandage his wounds.
He winces when I hug him too tight.
Other mothers tell me I shouldn’t
let him go, but he is my youngest,
and I know more, maybe,
than I ever thought I would
about what it is to move
through the world with heaviness,
and worry. If something is coming—
say a beast, slouching—it will come
whether I am looking or not.
At the skate park, his body is a thrash
of bones, of effort and risk,
and if I can bear it, I can see
how he is learning
to skim stone like a swift,
and lift.
Rebecca Brock is the author of The Way Land Breaks (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023). Her work appears in The Threepenny Review, CALYX Journal, Rust & Moth, and elsewhere. Her awards include the 2025 Lascaux Poetry Prize, the Kelsay Book’s Woman’s Poetry Prize, and the Editor’s Choice Award at Sheila-Na-Gig. She is a reader for Supporting Women Writers in Miami (SWWIM). She has been a flight attendant for most of her adult life and is still surprised by this fact. Find her online at rebeccabrock.org.
About the author