Memory is the stone
lodged in my throat,
the cough that brings
a fresh stream back
into thought. Lily Creek
in the 1970s,
how we’d swim
ducking our heads
under, spitting mouthfuls
of water at each other.
What to blame
for this latest crop
of mushrooms in the yard,
bubbles in the aquifer
of a troubled heart.
With just a handful
of pebbles I shiver the skin
near the river’s end.
I tell you my dream
is to sip again what was once
so clean. Let’s un-sock
our feet and visit
a different brook, low
around noon and high
just six hours later.
—
Beth Oast Williams is the author of the chapbook Riding Horses in the Harbor (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her poetry has been accepted for publication in Nimrod, Salamander, Leon Literary Review, SWWIM, One Art, Dialogist, Invisible City and Rattle‘s Poets Respond, among others, and nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize.
