Natalie Crick, “The Moon-Silvered Grass”

The Moon-Silvered Grass

I have carried this coldness like a diamond
For years.
Holding it near,
Close as blood.
Falling into this black silence.
It is deceptive, a mirror.

That night
Red and blue lights
Turned on the snowy fields,
The ragged trees behind, and
Mothers woke in the night,
Coming to that same question:
Why?
Like someone else’s bad dream.

The child vanishes from the store.
The girl with a full suitcase
Climbs into a truck on the highway.

And what they tell us is simple:
We disappear.

 

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Natalie Crick, from the UK, has poetry published or forthcoming in a range of journals and magazines, including Interpreters House, The Chiron Review, Rust and Moth, Ink in Thirds, and The Penwood Review. Her work is also featured or forthcoming in a number of anthologies, including Lehigh Valley Vanguard Collections 13. This year her poem “Sunday School” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

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