July 2017
Eric Nelson
enelson@georgiasouthern.edu
My wife and I live and write in Asheville, NC, where I've recently started teaching in the University of North Carolina-Asheville's Great Smokies Writing Program.  The poems "Stilts" and "Rockets" are about my kids' childhood passions--walking on stilts in my daughter's case, and building/launching model rockets in my son's. My most recent book is Some Wonder, published by Gival Press in 2015. My website is http://www.ericnelsonpoet.com/ 

STILTS

​
When her life is nearly more
than she can bear—boring,
inscrutable, beyond her
eight-year-old's control— 
she gets the stilts she got
for Christmas and rises up
and walks away, above it all,
tall strider, kind giant
high-stepping down
the driveway to the sidewalk
and around the block,
the neighborhood dogs
wagging behind fences,
paws to the top
of chain-link, necks stretched
for the sky, barking 
their owners up and out
to hush them and wave
to the one girl parade,
the tall ship all sail
and mast across the tips
of evergreens, body and spirit
for once not at odds, for now
everyone lifted up with her.


 
 
   
ROCKETS

 
He rises through rockets— 
models of desire
he crafts and launches
in a spear of hiss and smoke
a needle threading heaven— 
a vision of himself
slipping through its eye.
 
The distance to that
moment is devotion
to angles--fin to engine,
nosecone to fin— 
grounding
in the inescapable
laws of drag and thrust,
the bloody art of razors,
cement’s fine print,
the wind's indifference.
 
As if he’s breathed
ether, he’s giddy
with the invisible, the brief
and timeless pinnacle
before the parachute issues
and he staggers
under the scorched,
sulphurous body
as it drifts down, growing
into his outstretched arms.
My kids, Ben and Claire, a few years before their fascination with rockets and stilts
"Stilts" first appeared in my book Terrestrials (Texas Review Press, 2004)
"Rockets" first appeared in my book Terrestrials (Texas Review Press, 2004)
©2017 Eric Nelson
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