[audioplayer file=”https://admin.rattle.com/audio/GoodfellowWakening.mp3″]
WAKENING
In my dreams my uncle rides
the glacier like a surfboard,
arms wide open like a savior.
If he had lived, he might have
saved my childhood. He dismounts
the mountain, astonished to see me
no longer two years old and mittened,
hands hobbled by love. I’m sorry, I say.
We almost never speak of you.
It’s okay, he says. A snowman is a man
built of snow. A snow angel is made
by taking snow away.
—from Rattle #46, Winter 2014
__________
Jessica Goodfellow: “Poetry unmuddles my muddled thoughts and muddles my clear ones. My current project is writing based on the loss of my mother’s only brother on Denali in 1967, in one of the worst mountain-climbing accidents in U.S. history. We hardly talk about this tragedy in our family; by doing so I am both muddling and unmuddling our feelings and fears.” (web)
