Thaw
Plows have piled a whitened range—
faux mountains at the end of our street,
slopes shrinking, glazed, grayed. Fog
rules the day. In woolly air, shapes
stir—slow cars leave a trace
of exhaust, careful walkers share
loud intimacies. My mother's birth
slides across a calendar. Like
a stranger who jumps off a bus,
crosses tracks and strides toward us,
memory parts the sodden gloom
of our winter, as though, today,
only she can see where she
goes and track where she's been.
faux mountains at the end of our street,
slopes shrinking, glazed, grayed. Fog
rules the day. In woolly air, shapes
stir—slow cars leave a trace
of exhaust, careful walkers share
loud intimacies. My mother's birth
slides across a calendar. Like
a stranger who jumps off a bus,
crosses tracks and strides toward us,
memory parts the sodden gloom
of our winter, as though, today,
only she can see where she
goes and track where she's been.
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Disclaimer
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright© 2014 by Michael Lauchlan, “Thaw,” from The Cortland Review, (Issue 65, 2014). Poem reprinted by permission of Michael Lauchlan and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.