“While you are acting conscientiously and
sincerely wishing and trying to learn the truth
you cannot be wrong.”
—Emma Darwin, to Charles
On the hour she divided the teas and repeated
his words: pursue, enfold, likeness. In this way
she felt organized. Before he left for Bahia
the horses bent low to the dark water. He found
a dressmaker’s button: round moon, shaken
by the maple. A trickle, then the field’s edge
broke the water-line, stunning the body.
It was a quiet joy when he stole her boat
and brought her over. They watched the sudden
verge of the horizon shatter and rush, burst away
cloud-thin silvers and polished elms. They took
the bark sweet as cider at their throats. Nothing
like the taste of waking when it’s dark. The pattern
inside each leaf already bleeding to its frail borders.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 15, Issue 4.
Shawn Fawson resides with her family in Denver, Colorado. Her book Giving Way was published by The Bitter Oleander Press in 2010 and won the Utah Book Award for Poetry in 2011. Her work has appeared in Natural Bridge, Vallum, and Mid-American Review, among others.
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