(for K.D.)
I’ve only ever known you dying,
like the world you love so much —
the forest of your knowing
turning to ash. The bison,
the red wolf, the spotted turtle.
You. But still the trout lilies
push up through the mat of winter,
through the sodden mesh
of doctors’ appointments
where your small declines and
holdings on are measured —
incremental losses and delights.
I’ve only ever known you dying. No,
I know you living. Here, you greet me,
hat askew, crooked smile lighting up
the screen and I can hear the peepers
in your pond, a contrapuntal song
of life, your laughter a tremolo of lodgepole
pine seeds dispersing through flames.
This poem first appeared in One Art (2024).
—
Nancy Huggett is a settler descendant who writes, lives, and caregives on the unceded Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation (Ottawa, Canada). Find her work in American Literary Review, Passages North, Poetry Northwest, and The New Quarterly. She’s won some awards (2024 RBC-PEN Canada New Voices Award) and a gazillion rejections. She keeps writing.
