After Ada Limón
It is the season I often begin again, even though I am too old
for pencil sharpeners and fat, pink erasers, old enough to remember
the clap of felt erasers, holding my breath against the chalk dust.
The loons raft together on the lake, prepare to migrate, their seasons
out of sync with mine. When they reach the Gulf, perhaps they will find
their nests again. I will miss their tremolo and wail, calls of warning and loss.
When the nights lengthen I begin to recollect my debts, quiet acquittals
strewn behind me like brittle leaves. When it was my turn, how many times
did I freeze and thaw before I learned what it is to forgive?
My blood refuses the equinoctial chill, sunset at the midpoint
of its migration north to west, ball of magma that burns its image
onto the lake’s rippled skin. There is nothing else to do but begin again.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 25, Issue 4.
Kristin W. Davis (kristinwdavis.com) earned an MFA in poetry in 2022 from the University of Southern Maine, Stonecoast. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Nimrod, The Banyan Review, Passager and THINK, and on the Split this Rock blog and Maine Public radio’s Poems from Here. Her work has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and earned the International Human Rights Arts Festival’s Creators of Justice Award.
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