I follow Marcia Brady on Twitter: Mo McCormick, Actor/Author.
She posts a video with her older brother and they dance, a fast waltz,
under an oak tree with dozens of hanging pastel paper parasols.
She holds his hands, looks up into his face: he watches her feet.
I wish we were friends. I’d call her, Mo, too, one syllable, low:
prayerful, bovine. Mo asks her brother, do you have a girlfriend yet?
She leads, spins him around: I love her in a way I couldn’t back then.
As a child, I loved the middle girl, Jan, the jealous one, Eve Plumb,
Bible spondee fruit, with a TV J-name, and that blue crochet vest.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child.
When I was a child, I’d see Mo’s face on my tin lunchbox, but now I see
her freckles mirrored a small star cluster visible on clear nights—
Constellation of Bejewelled Silver Studs on Soft Velvet Bell Bottoms.
Constellation of Kindness. Constellation of Purple Devotion.
Copyright © 2022 by Jennifer Martelli. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 12, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.