Laura Foley
A Trace of Smoke
If I had a son who was forty-one
and willing to listen,
I’d call him on his birthday
and say: I remember—
the scent of wood smoke
on a pale September morning,
how you wailed in my arms
without nursing,
then dropped into that deep newborn sleep
as if sliding back toward a place
softer, safer than Earth.
And though I tried to hold you
against every sharp edge of pain,
I failed, again and again,
through all those long years—
I’d tell him, if he wanted to hear.
Yet still, I’m grateful
for this thin ribbon of wood smoke
in the cooling September air,
how it rises, faint and familiar,
as if bringing him home.
Laura Foley is the author of, most recently, Sister in a Different Movie. Her work has been published in such journals as Alaska Quarterly, Valparaiso, One Art, American Life in Poetry, and included in anthologies such as How to Love the World and Poetry of Presence. She holds graduate degrees in Literature from Columbia University, and lives with her wife on the steep banks of the Connecticut River in New Hampshire.