Because the world has its own version of solace
- Because the world has its own version of solace
in a field of decapitated corn stalkson the corner of Reed’s Bridge and Elma flock of wild turkeys scratchedas if something nourishing remainedbetween the rows of dry stubble.They interrupted a disappointmentI can’t now remember but rose in my bodylike fever-driven mercuryfrom those perilous, pre-digital yearswhen I once spent an undocumented hourusing the unprotected tip of my finger,to play with quicksilver spilledfrom a dropped thermometer.I was taken by the element’s reluctanceto break, its talent for self-repair, reshufflingmolecules around a breach to form againa perfect, otherworldly bubble,when all I could be was the same girlsealed inside the held breathof what might come, watching for someas yet unnamed law of attractionto upend and shake me, hard,until something resembling danger, but soft,came loose and made medisappear and different and away. [End Page 84]
amy dryansky’s newest collection, Grass Whistle, was released in 2013 by Salmon Poetry, and won the Massachusetts Book Award for poetry. Her first book, How I Got Lost So Close to Home, was published by Alice James, and individual poems have appeared in a variety of anthologies and journals.
