Adult Poem
“I Carried”
By: Ashley Frye
I carried
a thin layer of Missouri dust
with me across state lines
Ocher colored wild daisies in the ditch, Joe Pye weed
covered in pollinators
Gas station coffee and cinnamon gum
Osprey nests above the Ohio River in Kentucky
The sound of fiddle music tugging me along childhood
memories
I’m thinking of her hands,
wrapped tightly around mine,
her breath rising and falling
I am thinking,
“We were just here,”
and
“This, too, is going to destroy me,”
my heart feeling the slow ricochet of the season of life
we are in
Whole rivers move backwards sometimes
Trees pull from their roots
Hearts sting with the brush of too much salt
And yet
No matter when it happens,
I will let it circle, let it move in closer
I’ll lean on the ones who’ve stood still for me before
And the Carolina wren will be there to greet me,
the barred owl will call me back to myself,
and the river that flowed backward
through the worst of the storm
will orient itself on the horizon
and move steadily along a changed but living shore
