Corinne Wohlford Mason

HOUSATONIC

I spent most of my childhood waiting
it out. To grow up was to grow out.
The various permutations of family
took us, here, there, and then back,
and finally away from the little village
I loved best. Its mountains and pale
history, New England true, its snobbery
I thought—naively—I might one day
inhabit. Its waterfall and covered bridge
and old tombstones and a river whose ice
we took bets on breaking. We, too, were
breaking and icing back over, a current though
rushing hard beneath. Even today, it impinges
on my heart: my lost home, my taken,
best place.
But why long for it when then
all I could imagine was this life—here,
far away, grown, in a wicker chair
on my brick porch beside a pot of white flowers,
my child safely inside, a pen casual
between my fingers, the sun low
and golden?—this, too, a memory, a self
I made a long, cold, time ago.

CORINNE WOHLFORD MASON teaches American studies and chairs the women’s and gender studies program at Saint Louis University. She holds an MFA in poetry from Washington University and a PhD in American studies from Saint Louis University. Her poems have been published in the Grolier Poetry Prize Annual, Harvard Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, New Ohio Review, Phoebe, and Pleaides.