I thought I’d be afraid of living
in a small house in the middle
of a forest. Thought I’d be afraid
of copperheads that sometimes
crossed the path to our car.
Or ice storms that followed
winter rains and lasted for days,
downing trees and electrical poles,
rendering our house so cold
we had to wear our winter coats
and hats indoors. I thought I’d fear
those late spring winds so fierce
they yanked off roofs, demolished
barns, and once the firehouse,
another time our hospital.
I was afraid of those. Their
suddenness. And lightning storms.
Of bears I wasn’t scared.
I’d never seen a bear. A raccoon
ripped through a window screen
and ransacked everything.
It took me weeks to clean
its feces from the furniture
and floors. It could have rabies,
we were warned. And stay away
from possums and coyotes.
The only possums I had seen
were dead ones on the road.
In all the years I lived there,
I never saw coyotes, but heard one
through the dark the night before
my husband left. It wailed till dawn.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 23, Issue 6.
Andrea Hollander moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2011, after living for more than three decades in the Arkansas Ozarks, where she was innkeeper of a bed & breakfast for 15 years and Writer-in-Residence at Lyon College for 22. Hollander’s 5th full-length poetry collection was a finalist for the Best Book Award in Poetry from the American Book Fest; her 4th was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award; her 1st won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. Honors include two Pushcart Prizes (in poetry and literary nonfiction), two fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the 2021 49th Parallel Award in Poetry. In 2017 she initiated the Ambassador Writing Seminars, which she conducted in her home, but since the pandemic, via Zoom. Her website is www.andreahollander.net.
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