Two Poems by NANCY SIMPSON from Living Above the Frost Line

Water On the Highway

Water on the pavement moves before me,

Witch Water, I say, as though some sorceress waits

snapping her crooked fingers to make it disappear.

It is real I tell you. It evaporates,

or seems to, and it is always there.

Last night a friend talked about going home,

the roadmap she followed, the bridge she had to cross.

As I listened, I studied her words on paper

describing a house with stained glass windows,

a wicker chair, her father’s face.  I want to believe

poets who say this is the way home, who go and come

traveling lines as concrete and safe as any interstate.

The sun is hot today and my map is marked, open.

I drive home, knowing as I go,

I will have to cross water to get there.

Previously published in The Georgia Review

Reprinted in Living Above the Frost Line

New and Selected Poems, the first book by 

Carolina Wren in their laureate series.

Grass

We ought to be thankful it grows wild

on road banks, sometimes blond and curled.

It holds earth together and still,

we hear Earth is falling.

Sink holes in the south swallow cars.

We do not doubt, but can we help wonder

what happens when the bottom drops?

Maybe clumps fall with the Jeep

and the Porsche, forming the shoreline

of a lake in some post suburb.

Grass has a right to be cherished,

Crowning Glory, clipped to perfection.

No matter where we sleep we live

with threat hanging over our lawns.

Who says we need more weapons?

We want to know what will happen to grass,

grass everywhere, amber savannahs,

sacred as the hair on our heads.

Previously published in Southern Poetry Review,

reprinted in SPR 50th Anniversary Anthology

Don't Leave Hungry and reprinted in

Living Above the Frost Line, New and Selected Poems.


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