Rites of Passage
A child pushed and squeezed
through a cleft cut into a sapling,
boys who endure, without crying,
stinging ants inside their gloves,
girls who dance without rest for four days.
No such ordeal to mark my own coming of age,
my transitional moments distinctive only
in being anticlimactic: Pomp & Circumstance
finished playing before I mounted the stage;
first sex as exciting as Instant Wheat Ralston;
university life alienating enough to abandon
in favor of marriage. Milestones passed
with no sense of renewal, mere movements
along the same plane.
Until my first child was flopped on my belly,
squirming and wet, and a flood of love for her
that lifted me up like a wave and poured out
of my eyes: mind, body, and heart coalesced
in a single great starburst of joy. A peak experience,
yes, a shift of perspective profound
as it was unexpected.
A second transformative moment, years later,
more stark: the death of my mother.
Not a surprise, yet a shock that left me
feeling exposed as a crab after shedding its shell,
stripped of the buffer that stood between me
and the next generation to die. Nothing to do
except follow my feet where they walked
through the night streets of London, hours
as fittingly bleak as those childbirth memories
were rich. Isolated, alone, I felt only the tide
going out, and out. Always out.
Sharon Whitehill is a retired English professor from West Michigan now living in Port Charlotte, Florida. In addition to poems published in various literary magazines, her publications include two scholarly biographies, two memoirs, a full collection of poems, and four poetry chapbooks. Her last chapbook, THIS SAD AND TENDER TIME, appeared (Kelsay Books) in December 2023; PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER is forthcoming from Fernwood Press in 2025.