POEMS/ Keeping Track
Keeping Track
She hated the way words disappeared –
knew they were hiding somewhere
in her head. If only she could find them
the way she’d learned to look at mud and snow,
to tell if fox or coyote had left its trail,
a porcupine had waddled den to tree,
a fisher cat had bounded close behind it,
could recognize the mitten-shaped rear paws
of snow shoe hares, the marks the back feet made
before the front feet left their prints behind,
the nest the grouse would dig in snow drifts
to keep it safe. She’d gained the skills to read
those forest signs, but had no map to trace
for pieces missing from her store of words;
their shadows hid behind her tongue, refused
to speak. She blamed herself for losing names
of books, of movies she had seen, of plays,
forgetting an agreed on date to meet a friend.
Sometimes on winter days she saw the marks
of claws the bears made on the tree trunks
before their winter naps. Her words were hibernating
too, and like the bears, would wake. She let them sleep.
Keeping Track appears in Migrations (Antrim House, 2013) and in the 2014 issue of Bloodroot Literary Magazine.
She hated the way words disappeared –
knew they were hiding somewhere
in her head. If only she could find them
the way she’d learned to look at mud and snow,
to tell if fox or coyote had left its trail,
a porcupine had waddled den to tree,
a fisher cat had bounded close behind it,
could recognize the mitten-shaped rear paws
of snow shoe hares, the marks the back feet made
before the front feet left their prints behind,
the nest the grouse would dig in snow drifts
to keep it safe. She’d gained the skills to read
those forest signs, but had no map to trace
for pieces missing from her store of words;
their shadows hid behind her tongue, refused
to speak. She blamed herself for losing names
of books, of movies she had seen, of plays,
forgetting an agreed on date to meet a friend.
Sometimes on winter days she saw the marks
of claws the bears made on the tree trunks
before their winter naps. Her words were hibernating
too, and like the bears, would wake. She let them sleep.
Keeping Track appears in Migrations (Antrim House, 2013) and in the 2014 issue of Bloodroot Literary Magazine.