April 2018

Near the Connecticut

            by Polly Brown

Four of us travelling in one canoe—

two small enough to fit between

the paddlers—down the Connecticut,

New England’s watery spine.

We sat on a ledge in sunshine;

then, needing to pee, I climbed

to a small wood. Sun-dappled shade,

blue chinks of sky, nameless

sparrows dipping in, weaving through:

no remembered detail explains

why in that moment I woke

to our life in paradise. Which means

it could happen

almost anywhere again.

Polly Brown has organized outdoor poetry events on her hillside in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, has written about war and peace at the Joiner Institute at UMass Boston, and will lead a workshop focused on two poems by Stanley Kunitz at the 2018 Massachusetts Poetry Festival. Pebble Leaf Feather Knife, her new book of poems, will be released by Cherry Grove in 2019. The two children in this poem are now busy rearing another generation of canoeists and kayakers.