Maggie Dietz

CHILDHOOD

One day in the woods I was suddenly scared of the slender birches, their thousand
bovine eyes, the way they would corporealize among the coarser trees, bright wicks
lit with trembling yellow tears. Up close they held out scrolls to decipher.
When desolation chooses you there is at first the feeling of being a little flattered.

Another day I hollowed out a snowbank to shelter a scrap of newspaper, an ink-mottled
page from a Red Owl sale flyer I believed to be alive because the wind kept beating it up
against my heels as I walked home from Queen of Angels Elementary where in Sister
Mary Fran’s room baby mice and chipmunks floated in Ball jars of formaldehyde.
I wanted everything to have a soul. 

Even then I lived for springtime, for the slice of light angling between the window frame
and vinyl shade. It is human nature to mistake relief for love.

I could never predict anything. And I thought when there was nothing left to imagine
I would be relieved. I tried to imagine it.

MAGGIE DIETZ is author of the poetry collections Perennial Fall (Chicago, 2006) and That Kind of Happy (Chicago, 2016). Her new book is If You Would Let Me (Four Way, 2026). She is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.