[Poetry] Holdfast by Gerry Sloan

is what anchors marine vegetation

instead of roots for drawing nutrients

if this were soil instead of sand, keeps it

from drifting into an alien ecosystem—

like my mother's first time to swim

in the ocean, sensing salt water

in her Betty Grable swimsuit, unable

to identify a delicate jellyfish floating

nearby. Oh honey, look at the beautiful

flower was all she could think of to say,

lifting it out of the waves before my father

could shout a warning. Even after a shower,

she missed her appointment with sleep,

hands stinging in that rented room,

an unwitting initiate of Neptune.

Gerry Sloan is a retired music professor living in Fayetteville, Arkansas. His collections are Paper Lanterns (2011), Crossings: A Memoir in Verse (2017), and a chapbook length selection in Wild Muse: Ozarks Nature Poetry (2022), all available on Amazon. Recent work appears in Slant, Sierra Nevada Review, and The Midwest Quarterly.