Dream of Carrying Natalie

by Gail Rudd Entrekin

1.

The snow is over my head

my blue snow suit, my father

laughing, picks me up, takes me

down the stairs, through the billows

of white, the dazzle, the bright –

down where the lawn used to be

down where we roller skated

leans into the deep back seat

and warm, settles me safely

down among the coats.

2.

I hold my arms out straight to the sides, hoping

I can lift her, lovely exhausted Natalie in shirt of grey

her black hair blowing, and she stands

behind me, stretches out, takes hold of my arms

and I lift, we rise up, stars blowing

such an upsweep of relief – I am strong

enough and she is so light.

3.

Natalie and I are drifting now.

Somewhere below the fragments of her son

come together, knit themselves closed.

We see boys running.

Surely that one’s Logan

whole again. 

* * * * *

Gail Rudd Entrekin is Poetry Editor of Hip Pocket Press and Editor of the online environmental literary magazine, Canary (www.canarylitmag.org).  She is Editor of the poetry anthology Yuba Flows (2007) and the poetry & short fiction anthology Sierra Songs & Descants: Poetry & Prose of the Sierra (2002).

Her poems have been widely published in anthologies and literary magazines, including Cimarron Review, Nimrod, New Ohio Review, and Southern Poetry Review, were finalists for the Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry from Nimrod International Journal in 2011, and won the Women’s National Book Association Award in 2016. 

Entrekin taught poetry and English literature at California colleges for 25 years.  Her books of poetry include The Art of Healing (with Charles Entrekin) (Poetic Matrix Press 2016); Rearrangement of the Invisible, (Poetic Matrix Press, 2012); Change (Will Do You Good) (Poetic Matrix Press, 2005), which was nominated for a Northern California Book Award; You Notice the Body (Hip Pocket Press, 1998); and John Danced (Berkeley Poets Workshop & Press, 1983).  She and her husband, poet and novelist Charles Entrekin, live in the hills of San Francisco’s East Bay.