Mary Simmons
Poetry
Mary Simmons is a queer writer from Cleveland, Ohio. She earned her poetry MFA from Bowling Green State University, where she also served as the managing editor for Mid-American Review. She has work in or forthcoming from trampset, Moon City Review, One Art, Beaver Magazine, Yalobusha Review, and others.
Trespass
When we’re gone, there’ll be wheat,
and it still ambers every fall, and it dies,
and stubbles again through the earth.
And it won’t have meant much of anything.
And there’ll be a pang in the cavity
of a cumulonimbus, and that will be all.
Blackbirds drag circles in dust,
footprint tapestries of meadow,
and heat hangs low over the milkweed.
Coyotes howl all night. No, not howl,
cry. They cry until their lungs ache,
and then they sleep in the clearing,
and the grass dews, and the fog breaks.
And it won’t have meant anything more
than a smooth, white pebble in the face
of sandstone. And the only trace
will be pine needles scattered
across the path, sinking into the mud.
It’s raining, and the crows
are little scorched things, burnt
all the way through. This is what home
means when home is a sunspot
waving over the field. When we’re gone,
we’ll love more. We’ll have more to lose.
“ For about three nights in September, I was kept awake at night by the howling of coyotes. It was loud, and close, and forced me to spend time with my thoughts, alone in the dark. I wrote ‘Trespass’ as a way of exploring nature without the human, which, innately, makes it an exploration of what it means to be human, to exist, to have awareness of one’s own temporary nature. ”
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