Aaron Tyler Hand

Mirror Lake, Oregon

What’s the Latin name
for a winged ant? 

What dead word
describes it crawling
through the thick
mud next to me
or it unwinding
belly up in the cold
body of water? 

What about when
water ripples over
its throat—legs twitching
like an s.o.s.
not for itself
but for those left
in mourning? 

There is noise pollution
coming from one end
of the lake, the other
has people wading
in the water,
I came here
to escape a city
in the headlines. 

I find myself hiding
from the sun
under a tree,
counting splashes
as I cock my arm
back and snap
it at the wrist
to see how far
I can skip stones. 

We’re all finding ways
to break the impression
waxed into the lake,
refusing to look
at our own reflection
but only some of us
are drowning. 

Does this loss
translate too?

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Aaron Tyler Hand is a creative writer and literary critic with an MFA in creative writing from Texas State University. His debut poetry collection, Floodchaser, was the winner of the 2025 Catamaran Poetry Prize and is due out April 2026. His work has appeared in Attached to the Living World: A New Ecopoetry Anthology, Poem-a-Day, Texas, Being: A State of Poems, San Antonio Express-News, Gasher Journal and elsewhere. You can hear him talk about poetry on The Personhood Project podcast and keep tabs on his future publications at www.aarontylerhand.com.