In The Spring When My Beloved Is Away
- In The Spring When My Beloved Is Away
yo / smell is
always with me.
—Sonia Sanchez
On days I miss you,I smell like a ginseng leaf
during the first rain after sixdays of sun. And like ginseng,
I've hidden myself awayin this thin crease, high
on the mountain, but stillmy missing you finds me
like a bear finds a bee-tree'sbody and claws the comb's
belly like missing clawsmine. I pluck from beneath
blue cohosh a piece of the comb'sbelly that the bear forgot,
and now I rush, like all bearsI've frightened from bee-trees,
down the mountain to waitfor your return. [End Page 56]
Noah Davis grew up in Tipton, Pennsylvania, and writes about the Allegheny Front. Davis's manuscript Of This River was selected by George Ella Lyon for the 2019 Wheelbarrow Emerging Poet Book Prize from Michigan State University's Center for Poetry, and his poems and prose have appeared in The Sun, Southern Humanities Review, Best New Poets, Orion, North American Review, and River Teeth, among others. Davis earned an MFA from Indiana University and lives with his wife, Nikea, in Missoula, Montana.
