In California
a grove of Ginkgo trees
scrubbed gold by winter wind
shimmer like mirrors
and I wonder,
could I begin again?
Beneath this sun
surrounded by these mountains
layered one upon the other
like elephants
growing bluer by the distance?
My father might’ve stayed here,
in Petaluma.
It was a car that decided it and 3,000 miles between him
and all he’d ever known.
That was 30 years ago.
So it was me or California,
and I wonder,
but the Ginkgo leaves shake their heads
no.
Ava Mack (she/her) is poetry editor at The Lost Poetry Club and a reader for ONLY POEMS. She was the 2023 Poetry Fellow at The Writers' Room of Boston. Her work has been published in Muleskinner Journal, Free the Verse, Pearl Press, Heimat Review, EDGE CITY, thread litmag, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. She lives somewhere in between Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
a grove of Ginkgo trees
scrubbed gold by winter wind
shimmer like mirrors
and I wonder,
could I begin again?
Beneath this sun
surrounded by these mountains
layered one upon the other
like elephants
growing bluer by the distance?
My father might’ve stayed here,
in Petaluma.
It was a car that decided it and 3,000 miles between him
and all he’d ever known.
That was 30 years ago.
So it was me or California,
and I wonder,
but the Ginkgo leaves shake their heads
no.
Ava Mack (she/her) is poetry editor at The Lost Poetry Club and a reader for ONLY POEMS. She was the 2023 Poetry Fellow at The Writers' Room of Boston. Her work has been published in Muleskinner Journal, Free the Verse, Pearl Press, Heimat Review, EDGE CITY, thread litmag, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. She lives somewhere in between Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
