For A.N., after M.K.D.
I am in a garden where I know you could identify
and name each flower. Fires in Canada send
smoke all the way to northern Minnesota.
A low dense fog covers the entire city—a thick
layer of ash. Everyone drives with their headlights
on in the middle of the day. When you were last here,
I wrote a poem about how you and your husband looked
so in love as you sat side by side in separate chairs.
What is the compulsion to name things—the larkspur
and the delphinium, the ranunculus and the rose.
The segmented cactus in my living room blooms
with tiered fuchsia blossoms. The African violet
in my dining room has a single purple flower and I
just had to tell somebody some things have grown.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 26, Issue 1.
Erin Lynn Marsh is a poet living and working in Bemidji, MN. She is the author of Disability Isn’t Sexy (Jules Poetry Playhouse Publications, 2019), which was nominated for a 2019 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. Her work has appeared in Post Road Magazine, Sugar House Review, Paper Darts, Emrys Journal, wordgathering.com, and the anthology Hers: Poets Speak (while we still can), Vol. 2 (Beatlick Press and Jules’ Poetry Playhouse Publications, 2017), edited by Jules Nyquist. She was a 2019/2020 Region 2 Arts Council Artist Fellow and was previously awarded two Individual Artist Grants. You can find her online at erinlynnmarsh.com.
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