Into the marsh go
questions of origin. Answers
rarely come out.
To name
a place is to be so bold
as to believe
in harnessing habitats
for one’s own. At least
as long as it takes
for a new map
to be drawn and published.
I prefer to believe
in the unfolding
and refolding
of lyric terrains—they sing
for themselves.
Frogs dart across moist areas of a tended path,
grasshoppers take the dry,
beavers’ work evident by the dead
trees in a still pond—no sign
of the maker, everywhere there.
I step into another woman’s childhood landscape
and can smell my own
in this boathouse on a lake. Fresh
or salt water, it floats. Nothing gets trapped underfoot.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 