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.

(originally published on the Acadamy of American Poets, Poem-a-Day, January, 2022)