MISSOURI - Susan Kay Anderson
It is cool, a small ditch
under some cedar hedges next to the house.
Nobody knows I’m there—this is where
the sour grass grows
that I eat. It is tangy and I see
sparks fly out of my brain
when I shut my eyes. I see Nome
before we get there. The Big Dipper
and the Little Dipper. Polaris. Aurora borealis.
Later, when we moved to Nome,
I found a place similar
stuck on the side of a hill—
Chicken Hill—where burrowing owls
hunted at night and their wings
brushed the tundra air right above
where I lay, waiting for the sun
to go down—of course it never did,
for our dog Shumagin
to come find me, bring me home
to our house across the creek
where I wrote my own Nancy Drews
in shadow writing on my bedroom walls
listening again
for the gunshot from the neighbor
woman—a suicide,
and listening again for our baby sitter’s
drunk boyfriend snoring on the couch
or for Mr. Peterson to come
give me more 8 track tapes.
For Cathy Cabinboy’s mom to unfreeze,
for Deena’s brother to empty the water
from his hip waders in the Kusitrin River,
for little Rena to not be run over
by the snowplow.
I am waiting, waiting in the bedroom in Missouri
someone’s house where we stayed over
I drew on all the freshly painted walls—
while waiting for the animals
I drew to guide me, take me to their land
where we all speak the same language.
Same cries. Same calls.
Originally Published by Square One, 2006
Susan Kay Anderson resides at the headwaters of Sutherlin Creek in the Umpqua River Basin in southwestern Oregon. Her poetry book, Mezzanine, features her work as a graveyard-shift custodian at a university. While growing up, her family lived in Nome, Alaska and on Indian reservations in Nevada and Montana. She attended Colrain, Tin House, and Aspen Writers conferences. Anderson is a National Poetry Finalist and won the Jovanovich Award in poetry.
https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/susan_kay_anderson
