October 2015
Having three children in as many years has "influenced" my poetry—perhaps pervades it—as does the post-Christian South, where I've been raised and where my husband and I are raising all these babies. We live in Arkansas, where the mosquitoes are so bad it's said that sitting out all night with them was a form of torture in the Civil War. I am the author of Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing 2014), and I teach for Shorter University's online program. Read more at reneeemerson.com.
Ascension
The blue wildflowers break
underfoot; a first frost, winter’s ritual.
I spend my days at the farmhouse.
Always the sound of cows;
at night, the dreams of cows.
Their paths through the grass,
the way they watch
when we walk in the yard.
At church the other women
say I should know, by now,
my baby’s differing cries.
That I should be well-versed
in the language of need.
A line of geese moves
through the blank repetition
of pasture. Modest as nuns.
Finally, one rises to flare its wings.
-first published in Cider Press Review
The Baby Keeps My Place
While eating again in the deep
confusion of what should be
sleeping hours, she uses
her free hand to casually
tear apart the onion-thin
pages of our family Bible,
right at the part where
God saves whom He will.
©2015 Renee Emerson