On the Spring Equinox by Amanda Merpaw

July 21, 2022
Poet name: Amanda Merpaw Poem name: On the Spring Equinox Poem: I return at the thaw. First fog of ferry light. There’s always a boat, a body of water. Benediction carries itself the same. Can you stumble on grace uninvited? Once, there was mud. We wore matching boots. Not here, another lake, the other side. You burned coffee on the fire. The mosquitoes stayed the night. What bends in the balsam stays buried. The flooding, last summer, and two years before that, and me too, flooded. In August, at night, this clearing, that deer, I tell you, he hovered. Levitated. Or it was me. I was drinking drunk or I wanted to be drunk or I wanted to be impossible. I wanted to climb inside the hide of the deer. Me, in the ribs of him, held, holding. The galaxy. The swallow. I looked them up, the antlers. I didn’t need to. The trees are different on purpose. Yes, they are. Note the nervation of the leaves. It’s felt like March all year and now it is. Regardless, the lake is here. Keep your canoe. I summon the idea of swimming again. I told you, I talk water. I didn’t expect to be gone and I’m gone. I’m full of moon. I’m full. Are you alive? I’m really asking. I should have been closer. I was close, but closer. The deer. To know. It’s the hide, the humming. Today, it’s Sunday weather out. I wear the wrong coat. End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Amanda Merpaw Previously published in Put The Ghosts down Between Us (Chapbook, Anstruther Press, 2021) Amanda (she/her) is a poet, writer, editor, researcher, and educator. Her writing has appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, CV2, Grain, Literary Review of Canada, The Maynard, Pathways, Prairie Fire, PRISM International, and Room. She was shortlisted for Arc Poetry Magazine’s 2022 Poem of the Year Contest. Her first chapbook, Put the Ghosts Down Between Us, was released in September 2021 by Anstruther Press and her debut poetry collection is forthcoming from Palimpsest Press in Spring 2024. She is currently a contributing editor at Arc Poetry Magazine and a member of the editorial board at Anstruther Press.