LAURIN BECKER MACIOS
But When You Feel Longing
But when you feel longing, there is somewhere to go:
the tall grass flecked with ticks, searching with their legs
for yours; the boardwalk made of leafless trees
staring all day at the full water—not at their own reflections,
but at each wet molecule together creating each wide wave
and each small fish curving its black body above the sand.
When you feel longing, you are not a bride, not a bridge,
not a bird, not a burrow hole, not a cave; you are a mountain
raised over years and years of your own listening.
When you feel longing you are the sea floor, you are the blind
gossamer fish grazing it, its whole life one dark moment waiting
for something to pass by.
Laurin Becker Macios has her MFA in Creative Writing Poetry from the University of New Hampshire and is the Program Director for Mass Poetry. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in [PANK], Tupelo Quarterly, Theodate, RHINO Poetry, and Pif Magazine among others, and she was a finalist for Paper Nautilus' 2013 Vella Chapbook Prize. She lives in Boston with six plants and one wicked awesome husband.