Poems by Nichole Brazelson

I’ve been told that once

by Nichole Brazelson

From Canary Spring 2022

Nichole lives near the intersection of three rivers in the Ohio River watershed. She often slips away behind her house to a beloved patch of woods that is in constant danger of falling to home builders and greed. She has rewilded her yard to have trees and bushes that no one can take from the birds and rabbits.

a creek used to run behind my house,
down this cracked, brown-grass earth
into a pond that old mothers

talk about when they tell children
stories of catching crawdads and toads.
It seems impossible to me

that this brushwood flat
was once a wetland
offering full, soft-sucking welcome,

each step accompanied
by the reluctant squelch
of muddy liberation.

Twisted creek, made pregnant
with every storm, nursing reeds
and willows that could never get enough.

Hemmed in, diverted
by mounds of leaves and sharp-
angled twigs, but still able

to swamp the banks, disrupt
boundaries. Sometimes in spring,
when the snow melts

too fast for gutters to hold,
there is the sound of her water
laughing through the streets like music.