The Songs That Make Us by Nancy Schatz Alton When I play Romeo & Juliet on the piano I’m transported back to high school how I played out my grief again & again (slowly, far from well) as my mother listened. When I got stuck (often) she called out, keep going! She knew I played […]
Category: Poetry
Everything changes too fast.
Everything changes too fast. By Nancy Schatz Alton A friend asks me, ‘What’s it like to paddle board in the fog?’ She doesn’t know that my husband and I put the paddle board away in its winter home last night, atop the fishing boat. He might take the boat out again before spring. I might […]
Making a Path
Making a Path by Nancy Schatz Alton We are whacking our way through a forest, untamed. Underneath the understory there’s a million stories: Everyone who came before us making a path of every mistake and misstep broken trust and dried out bones wheels falling off the tracks ruts underneath the understory. We make our own […]
The Letting Go
The Letting Go by Nancy Schatz Alton This morning she drove away in the dark, headlights off. Forgotten headlights lighting up my worry. The monster comes roaring back: The one I left behind after her first year. Her neck will snap! The other driver won’t see her! Will they find my contact on the […]
The Battle
The Battle by Nancy Schatz Alton I am so full of light and dark and I do battle every day. I make a collage out of my world and pray the lightness wins. Lately I have dark, dark, dreams. But last night the end of my dreaming had a spark of light. I was watching […]
What I’ve been up to since graduation.
What I’ve been up to since graduation is making a life. By Nancy Schatz Alton I want so much more than that: For the crowd to cheer when I wander up to the microphone. To have learned how to wow the crowd with my words and intonation. To not care so much that I make […]
A Sum That Led Me Here
A Sum That Led Me Here by Nancy Schatz Alton My center spills into this day; I catch its edges with classical music. The notes promise epiphany; a recycling bin rolls down the drive. I know how long it takes to learn a melody, one line at a time. My brother writes, Remember the thunderstorm […]
Seeing
Marge Piercy Plants a Phrase “Some collisions bring luck.” -MP I am the highway at dusk, pink light, Mt. Rainier marks my horizon. I am you, the one that curls into me on the couch, 16 and awake, you color the atoms of this room with everything you see. I am here, looking at trees […]
Paddle.
I read the news while I should be writing. As in social media and NYT’s and texts from friends. It’s how I find out a poet who I don’t know, that’s how I find out Anya Silver died. As I find out she died, I read a poem of hers. And I love it. And […]
Learning to Be Quiet
Learning to Be Quiet by Nancy Schatz Alton Silence is not my first language. I fill all the spaces up with words. Especially when I’m nervous. Talk is not my daughter’s first language. She speaks with her eyes, her face, her singing voice, her silence. A teacher tells me she is the quietest student he […]