Two Poems by Sally Nacker

David’s Art

That day, I painted the sea at the seaside
where we lived in a small house
with a big window looking seaward.

I loved the wind and rain that thrashed
against the windowpane. I loved
all weather, altogether. I even thought

I was the weather; and the sea, I thought, was me
as my watercolors splashed over the paper, coloring
the blank world with a heaving and a tossing

of my own heart. I was a child, and I loved
that day at the window by the sea, looking
out at myself looking in at me.

*

North and South

When I ask whether you have moved
upstairs, you tell me
your study
is in your basement
still, and though that sounds
deep and dark, you say
it is most lovely with big windows
looking south
across a gravel path
that cuts through a weedy flowerbed.

It is down this path,
you say, that yesterday
a little fox came running
toward you, then stopped
at the window
and looked northward
into your wildness.

*

Sally Nacker was a recipient of the Connecticut Audubon Society’s Edwin Way Teale Writer-in-Residence at Trail Wood award in the summer of 2020. She is published in numerous magazines, including The Sunlight Press (forthcoming), Blue Unicorn (forthcoming), Hawk and Whippoorwill, Hoot, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Mezzo Cammin: An Online Journal of Formalist Poetry by Women, The Fourth River, Grey Sparrow Journal, The Red Wheelbarrow, and The Wayfarer. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University. Her prior collections—Vireo (2015), and Night Snow (2017)—were published by Kelsay Books. Her third collection–Kindness in Winter–also by Kelsay Books, is due out in April, 2021. Sally lives in Connecticut with her husband, and their two cats.