- Standing Rock Nocturne
for Noah
Tonight, our books, our blender, our bed, these small talismansof domesticity, and you, feel far from the sigh of the patched
camper window, its lung of Ziploc and electrical tape rasping out the rhythm of the drums, the lilis and akishas; far from these stippled
curtains that feel, sometimes, like the whole universe; far from the pipelinepictures the kids taped to the cabinets' veneer. I wish I had hiked the frozen hill
tonight for reception, called to tell you forgive me for not calling sooner. No, I wish I had braved the snow to say every day is more
diffcult and beautiful than I could have imagined. No.I know, what I should have told you: I can be far from you
because of you. I should have thanked you for the place you hold, tangled (I imagine) in our cheap sheets, our ketubah still balancing
on its single nail above your head. Thank you, because I know I can return,crawl to you, asleep in our bed, and you'll murmur, shore me to the steady
beat of the blood in your chest. How I'll whisper about the one wasp who lived with me here through all of October. How gently it rested,
nights on my cheek, how we would both have faith we could staystill like this: learn not to hurt one another. Thank you for tending [End Page 130]
our houseplants in my absence, even the Christmas cactus we thought was dead, for your unflagging belief in the bright
bloom that comes suddenly during seasons of snow, and for your handskeeping each small thing alive, turning each pot toward the sun. [End Page 131]
Teresa Dzieglewicz is an educator and Pushcart Prize-winning poet. She received her mfa from Southern Illinois University, where she received the Academy of American Poets Prize. She is the winner of the 2018 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize and she has received fellowships from New Harmony Writer's Workshop, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, and the NY Mills Arts Retreat. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in the Pushcart Prize XLII, Best New Poets, Beloit Poetry Journal, Ninth Letter, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere.