“Southbound”

by Rebecca Siegel

Let’s say the morning began

in a snow globe and we rode

in a comet’s tail. Let’s say the

years skate backwards on

the ice of ancient oceans. Let’s

say the best of us is traveling

down some Ontario highway

with the sunset over our shoulders

and the painted stripes piling up

like treasure. Let’s say some parts

of the future never happened,

the hard ones and the ones 

where we couldn’t look each

other in the eye. Let’s say,

frog of my heart, my own

heart, that the ship is waiting

in the harbor, fully fitted,

its hold filled with canned 

peaches, pemmican, lamp oil,

barking dogs. Let’s say the day

starts sunlit between the snow,

the leads are open in the ice

just a little longer. Let’s say we

can make it south before winter

freezes our gaps and traps us, 

before we learn how to hurt

each other in fresh ways. Let’s

say we begin in some frosted

past, our breath wet on the

glass, full steam ahead.

Rebecca Siegel lives and writes in Vermont. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Moist Poetry Journal, Visual Verse, Bloodroot Literary Magazine, PoemCity Montpelier, Dust Poetry Magazine, Analog Magazine, Goat’s Milk Magazine, Zócalo Public Square, Container's Multitudes series, Straight Forward Poetry, and elsewhere.