Mary Simmons

I Am Looking for Marrow in These Woods

Tell me: is it worth
all this searching? 

How quickly a downed tree
no longer seems to have ever been alive, 

how softly the bullfrogs mourn
in spaces away from all our hands. 

Leaves do not drown but dry,
floating in funeral marches 

across the pond’s surface.
We do not bury our dead 

but carry them through the meadow,
bearing all these ghosts on our backs, 

walking through aster and wheat
fading into October amber. 

We walk and we do not look back.
Swallowed in pond, we do not recognize 

ourselves. Do you remember
the black birds settling in your stomach, 

how they hollowed out the parts of you
you left to September? 

Do you remember bridges
over rivers the dirt reclaimed? 

We name the trees after great-grandfathers
and call ourselves poets. 

You are rotting, and you will not
stop, even when I ask politely.

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Mary Simmons is from Cleveland, Ohio and is an MFA candidate at Bowling Green State University. She is an assistant editor for Mid-American Review.