A Poem by Rose Strode

There was a moment I hung head-down in the storm-deep creek, knee pinned between a tree
and my bicycle, when all fear went out of me. I mean completely, the way the sea removes debris
from the living purple lace of the body of a sea fan. The current waved me, gently. I felt the light
shining through my porous body. I could look downstream, to my left and right, but not behind
me, at my wrecked bike, the fallen tree, or any other aspect of my life. I remember thinking well,
you always wondered how you would die with a sense of awe and curiosity, which I’ve only ever
known from reading the kind of books that make me forget everything, the kind I wished I could
stay in. This was how I could have lived, in a different life: free of anxious thoughts.  A leaf
tumbled by, a last-winter’s leaf twirled in the current, falling as I must have fallen, end over end.
In the light, every flaw stood out like a jewel.  

Rose Strode is a poet and essayist. Her work has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Poet Lore, and The Broad River Review, and is forthcoming in Sugar House and New Ohio Review. She is a recipient of the Gulick Fellowship at Valparaiso University, a student in the Creative Writing MFA program at George Mason University, and a managing editor at Stillhouse Press.