POOH STICKS IN THE GARDENS AT BLENHEIM PALACE


On three, our hands spring open, our fingers webbing out but touching nothing as we let the twigs go--the ones we picked from the ground so carefully, whose lines we admired, testing their weight, true in our open palms, their grey bark no longer hiding the green of their youth.



And in this brief moment, before we turn and race to the other side of this narrow bridge, we lean. We lean, chests heaving against the cold railing, to push our twig through first on the other side just inches ahead of the others, but still ahead, still worth having carried this far after all, our heads bobbing like the heavy blooms of sunflowers, our bodies reaching up to the very ends of our toes, our tender green desires pressing, pressing, pressing hard against the odds.