BY NICOLE ROBINSON

It was a marsh where mosquitoes never masked their longing
for mud, or the blood of anyone. My foster father arrived early

to listen to songbirds, to watch how they rested
on brambles to sing what only they knew

they were singing. If we could learn the leaning of their language
we wouldn’t have so many questions, would we?

He moved his hands across my body like a hot evening,
a kind of calling that steamed. Sometimes night slid

so gently over the horizon I forgot
it was swallowing the day.

Nicole Robinson’s poems have appeared in Connotation Press, Tahoma Literary Review, Great River Review and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an Individual Excellence Award in poetry from the Ohio Arts Council and is the Narrative Medicine Coordinator at Akron Children’s Hospital.