The National Poetry Review
Maureen Seaton
I TRIED TO WRITE A SONG FOR THE BEGINNING OF LIFE
Yesterday we hiked right up to the cliffs so we could touch them with their splashy green
lichen as if local six-year-olds had painted them for spring. A man in a tan raincoat walked
by on the other side of the creek where we sat breathing ions, but my friend didn’t see him,
she said, and the Chihuahua on my lap didn’t see him either, evidently, so I wondered if
maybe I was starting to see dead people. (Ha Ha?) (If so, why the raincoat?) Then we
discovered the playground with its huge blue spider web, its rockclimbing wall, and a swing
that looked like a mandala. It was so cold we were the only kids, big or little, in the entire
park. Now today it’s snowing and I miss the cliffs and the rattlesnake warnings and the
sound of the creek on its way down the Rockies. I’d like to write a song for the beginning of
life, it’s true, or for the end, I’m not sure—maybe both. Maybe they’re simultaneous, after
all, and when the mind pauses after its wild ride, whatever it was that made the body move
moves on.
MAUREEN SEATON has authored two dozen poetry collections, both solo and collaborative—recently, Undersea (JackLeg, 2021) and Sweet World (CavanKerry, 2019), winner of the 2019 Florida Book Award for poetry. Her honors include Lambda Literary Awards for both Lesbian Poetry and Lesbian Memoir, the Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Award, an NEA, and the Pushcart. She was voted Miami’s Best Poet 2020 by The Miami New Times and is Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at the University of Miami.
The National Poetry Review 