James Dickey Award Winning Poems

I Never Thought My Mother

―after Jack Gilbert

would come back after she died.

How astonishing that she has shown up

as a copperhead living under the front porch.

I stand on the edge and look for her.

Mostly, I do not see her. But in August,

as she nears birthing, she eases onto

the asphalt to let the sun loosen the cold

from her scales. She coils about the drain spout,

or she stretches along the grass edge

of the driveway. I know she is my mother

because her slow unspooling beguiles me.

I know her because I can’t take my eyes off her.

I watch her with that same stitch at my sternum―

if I clear my mind of fear, we might reconcile.

I suppress my need for her to hug me back.

I wonder if I’m the thing that needs escaping.

At any moment, her languid looping patterns

could break into lightning.

My husband unlocks the gun safe, warms up

on a paper target. She cares nothing

about death. She will return, one life

to the next, until I no longer need her.

I Walked into the Snow

―after Nicole Callihan

and threw your voice into the storm,

and when you spoke again―

a gray moth emerging from my own mouth―

I recognized the hitch in my heart.

Then you came back again:

a single peach hanging from a high limb.

I inhaled your fragrance between is and if only

and tried to keep breathing.

And when summer passed,

again, I thought the season of grief

was done. But then, you became the light

filtering red through sweet gum.

I stood still and let you enfold me

the way I always wanted you to.

And when afternoon’s chill descended

and I moved on, you did

what you had never done before―

you let me go.