A Poem by Karla Linn Merrifield

Watershed Moment

Crossing wetlands

on parkway bridges
I travel June’s distances
in time to the Ice Age
its retreating glaciers
that scarred the landscape
creating Long Pond,
shaping Braddock Bay,
the “lakes” of Durand Eastman Park.
Did those swans first get their feet
wet in the Pleistocene?
Did geese pause in migration
parsing summers to come
as cold set free this inland sea
named Ontario? As if through
a geologic trick, I arrive
on Solstice Eve at the warm
watershed of grief,
with tears for my brother unfrozen
then dried by dragonfly wings.

Karla Linn Merrifield recently received the Dr. Sherwin Howard Award for the best poetry published in Weber - The Contemporary West in 2012. A seven-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, she has had 300+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has nine books to her credit, the newest of which are Lithic Scatter and Other Poems (Heartlink) and The Ice Decides: Poems of Antarctica (Finishing Line Press). Forthcoming from Salmon Poetry is Athabaskan Fractal and Other Poems of the Far North, and Attaining Canopy: Amazon Poems (FootHills Publishing). Her Godwit: Poems of Canada. (FootHills) received the 2009 Eiseman Award for Poetry. She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye (www.centrifugaleye.com). Visit her blog, Vagabond Poet, at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com.