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Heather Nelson is a poet, teacher, mother and recovering attorney based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She studied writing under the poet C.D. Wright as an undergraduate at Brown University. Most recently she studied poetry with Tom Daley and Barbara Helfgott Hyett. Heather is also a member of Poemworks, the workshop for publishing poets. Her work has been published in Main Street Rag, The Somerville Times, Constellations, Ekphrastic and The Compassion Anthology.

Fifty on the Floodplain

Heather Nelson

That’s not me you see

on a hot July morning

just shy of fifty

on what should be a work day

walking by the B.U. Bridge.

Five years ago there

was soccer duty, looking

for a rabbit with

the boy, living in a book

everyone could understand.

Today my purpose

is undecipherable

but clearly I’m here

corporal and blowsy as

the lilies, that visible.

This is not my street

anymore, only traffic

lights mark my corner-

red, green, then all flat water.

I’m scrambling for higher ground.

It’s crowded up here.

We’re all naked except for

our life vests, what’s left?

Only what we can carry

toward the shifting horizon.

— Heather Nelson

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