MEG STOUT

Mother’s day

At the city pond,
the reptiles are out:
a garter tastes air

beneath roots,
painted turtles swing
striped heads

in syrupy sun,
two snappers mate
in a mess of armor. Land-

bound, I watch
the snappers tussle
the brown water

until it becomes
them: gleam
of wave, gleam

of shell—her round
ovum still gray
and unmoved as stones.

Meg Stout’s poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Cimarron Review, Guesthouse, North American Review, Zó calo Public Square, and the Portland Press Herald. A graduate of the MFA program at Warren Wilson College, she lives in Maine on unceded Wabanaki territory.