Flow
—after the woodcut “Den Stora Anden” (The Great Spirit) by Kristina Anshelm
A girl sits in a wooden boat—
so small, so small.
About her, lake ripples—is dark,
is light. Tugging
her by one taut thread, though bigger
than both small boat
and her, a sacred duck. This girl
has in her grasp
no oars. With empty hands, with arms
raised up across
her chest, with both eyes (closed? open?
I can’t quite see . . .)
facing straight ahead, she moves now
by what propels
her line, a force she cannot name.
MARY ELDER JACOBSEN’s poetry has appeared widely in print and online journals such as Green Mountains Review, Cold Mountain Review, Four Way Review, storySouth, and The Greensboro Review, to name a few, and has been selected for Poetry Daily, radio, and anthologies. A recipient of a Vermont Studio Center Vermont Artists Week residency, the Lyric Memorial Prize, and other honors, Jacobsen holds an MA from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and an MFA from UNC Greensboro. Born in Washington, DC, she grew up in Annapolis and lives in rural Vermont where she works in editing, the arts, and the preservation of community spaces. She is the author of Stonechat, her debut collection of poetry.
