Emilie Lygren Publishes Poem
Emilie shares: “This poem published in issue 21 of the Wild Roof Journal. It’s a fantastic literary magazine and the rest of the writing and art in this issue is really worth checking out. This poem was born on a river many years ago but took a long time to revise. There were so many places I could have taken the metaphor; eventually, I just stopped tinkering and put the poem out in the world. Anyone else head in claws-first sometimes?”
—
Insights from Arthropods
by Emilie Lygren
Sometimes all it takes
is another living thing
to ease judgment on myself.
Sometimes it’s
a crawdad
crawling across
slick white granite
next to a river.
Velvet body and jointed legs
skittering on shining rock
above a crushing waterfall.
I can see where
it will struggle,
where the sides
are too steep to climb.
The swift current,
the easy route one foot over.
How often I act like
I know what’s coming.
Pretend the future
is a language
I know how to speak,
but still, move forward
wary and scared:
just in case, I’ll head in claws-first.
What if, like the crawdad
I trusted this tiny inch of sight
was enough to go on,
tried to remember that’s
all I’ve ever had.