The Snow Melts In Ringer Park
Maia Rauschenberg (Boston University, US)
.
.
The first earth
I’ve seen in months.
Soggy with snowmelt,
.
all muck and sunk
boots: I can smell it.
Must be like coming to port
.
after living a long time
at sea. But I’ve never
been long on the water:
.
once I went whale-watching
with dad, on a beeping skiff
tracking Humpbacks.
.
I’d read about New Bedford
Whalers wind-blown
after migrations,
.
how they’d be gone for three
years, home for three months.
About rendering,
.
and oil and light. Sailing
behind figureheads of women
or little girls
.
dipping fingertips
into salt water.
I was ten. I saw them,
.
gray and huge. I became
a new person, like everyone
gone from themselves,
.
barred by water
or ice from
the earth.
.
.
Maia, a Northern California native, has spent the last ten years living and working all over the US, including places like South Dakota, Maine, Alaska and Montana, with her partner and two dogs. She is currently finishing an MFA at Boston University, and will travel to Patagonia this fall as a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow.
