Three Poems by Susan Waters

 

There is an Autumn Within Us


which, when the wings fold,

comes as easily as habit, or instinct

which can conjure navigational maps from stars.



If the space within hollowed bones

had a voice, it might weep

for the season before sleep

when it vibrated with flight

over an Earth that seemed as it should:

incessant, growing, tangle of weeds, wheat, trees-

that could not be stopped, it seemed.




NO


To love a man like

that requires a mountain

of forgetting. Spring


still is in the heart.




The Lie

I sense it, like a mole

knows there’s more beyond

the clay wall

                        in front of him.



Snout bristling

he tunnels into dark, dirt packed

loosely at his sides,

stomach covered with stringy clumps.



Rooting, he knows full

well it could cave in

                        at any time.

Susan Waters started out as a journalist covering hard news in upstate New York and for 13 years was a magazine editor and writer at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary. Her publishing credits are extensive. She has won 10 prizes in poetry and has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry. Her chapbook Heat Lightning was published in 2017 by Orchard Street Press. Currently, she is Professor Emeritus at New Mexico Junior College.