Self-Addressed

Into the tall dark, into the tamarack wood, into a city, which at this hour, could be the shape of any migrating bird.

This is me, driving straight into my own life, past the river frozen over slick, the chokecherry’s saw toothed edges—

into the roughage of memories that surface slow and tired, memories so alike the stars enacting what is already gone.

I am grasping at the things easiest to love: Anas acuta, Pinus resinosa, Anthaxia inornata, the language of the prairies,

syntax that I have held like a dog with birch in her mouth, a landscape that runs through a body, is a body—

into the boiling ginger, into the neck of a loved one folded like a leveret, folded like a letter closing with I wish you were here,

I wish you were here—

Third Place in the Poetry Prize 2018