To the Log Partially Submerged at Copperas Pond
Hiking around Copperas Pond, I come upon you,
fallen from some tree, half under swamp.
Weren’t we, once, all part of something larger?
This the year I buried two mothers.
This, perhaps, why I’m drawn to you,
pausing mid-hike, edge of the pond,
reluctant to move on, why I find myself
listening so hard
to your silence
(though once you were
carbon-humming, sugar-rivered).
I want so much to unsnag you
from the muck, to right and root you
amid sunlit aster, frog-green moss.
Want you tall and flowered, again,
fluorescence of bloom. Or perhaps
you are Spruce or Pine, unblossomed?
I am ashamed—fifty years accepting
the oxygen you’ve ribboned into my lungs—
and I don’t even know how to name you.
So I do the human thing:
compose cloudy iterations of you.
Maligned swamp thing. Witch
dragging herself up from the mire,
hand over hand, by stone and stalk
drawing herself into cheekbone and
chin, ribcage, lichen-cinched waist.
What spells might you cast
once your mouth is unpuddled?
Only now I see you are no witch at all,
but a girl undrowned, belly-down in sweet grass
dredging for the others. Is this what I’m waiting for?
To see if my face is among them?
To find out if you’d reach for me.
ELIZABETH JOHNSTON AMBROSE’s writing appears in The Atlantic, Rattle, McSweeney’s, Emrys, and the collection Nasty Women Poets, among others. Read more.