Corinthians 13:11

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.

Credit

Copyright © 2022 by Jennifer Martelli. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 12, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

Last year, my friends and I challenged one another to write a sonnet a day. This is one of the survivors: my love poem to Maureen McCormick, aka Marcia Brady. As a child, I watched her character on television; now, I watch her on Twitter. To an extent, this is a poem about the evolution of a persona. But, really, this poem concerns itself with growing older, witnessing kindness, and valuing devotion to another person.”
Jennifer Martelli