Three Poems by Amy Small-McKinney

We Are / I Am

How often did I sit beside
an older woman and ignore her?
What kind of tree

produces seeds encased in pealike
pods? I am searching
for its name. Call me if you know.

Call me if you are learning to love yourself,
your body that has lived through
seventy turns, at least.

At the park, the pond’s water appears textured
because of how the wind moves.
Wind, that body we don’t see,

except when it forces us to lose
what we love, a hat or—
We begin and we end.

Somewhere in between—
today—a young woman turned away.
I am her old woman.

Call me if you know
how to trace the blossoms’ origins.
How to look closely

to find the solid seedcoat
that must be broken
before another Redbud tree is born.

*

Paper, Tree, Ascension

On the mountain edge my daughter
talked me down.
My body, a slip of paper.
Why would I want to rise?
I’m afraid of heights.
Nothing but clouds and the sun
coming and going.

Romantics adore sunset.
I don’t like it.
It means opening to the arrogance
of the dark forcing its way through light.
It means remembering my husband
does not remember,
confuses day and night.

I love those mornings
when I am the only one awake,
when silence is my audience,
my consolation. This is my heaven.

If I had to ascend, I would become a tree.
Solid, I would not drift away.
Only my topmost limbs rising.
The slim document of my life would remain.
Beneath me, a woman would rest.

*

Missing Sock

uncovered from inside
my aging body

beneath mounds of carping voices
and a lifetime of a killdeer’s

displays of distraction
intent on staying safe.

I am grateful to have found it—
this softer self—as though another

heart unlocked.
How long have we been lost?

Very nearly forever.

*

Amy Small-McKinney is a Montgomery County PA Poet Laureate Emeritus. She is the author of six poetry books, including three full-length books and three chapbooks. & You Think It Ends (Glass Lyre Press), her newest full-length book, was released in March 2025. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including American Poetry Review, Pedestal Magazine, Tahoma Review and Verse Daily, among others. She has contributed to many anthologies, for example, Rumors, Secrets, & Lies: Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion, & Choice (Anhinga Press, 2022) and 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium (Ashland Poetry Press). Her poems have also been translated into Korean and Romanian.