Remember
The mind’s the finest
gardener—in deepest
snows, the plum
tree blossoms.
Heartland in Winter
The trees were far
off and branchless—
how many masts
for which seas?
And you and I
on a train
in mist—
what did we
think we’d be?
Those Red Hills
Where I come from,
a hunting accident
is what we called
it when a boy
went into the woods
with a gun, when
someone hauled
his body back,
having buried
the gun, so no
other boy could
do anything
but mourn it.
This Voyage
Did you ever feel
you were a note
in a bottle
that read: I
am a ship
in a bottle.
Did you ever
think you’d been
tossed about a
long while when
all you’d been
doing was standing
at the kitchen
sink wishing
for a window?
The Inhabited Earth
The gods ran
back and forth
between
our houses—
like those dogs
who pretend
no one
has fed them.
Freight
What weighs
more—
pound
of feathers
or the memory
of thinking
you
might fly?
Sea Shanty
When land
is that
abstract,
you have
to sing
your way back.
Andrea Cohen’s most recent collection of poems, Everything, was published last year; a new collection, The Sorrow Apartments, is forthcoming. Cohen’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. She directs the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Read Elizabeth Jacobson’s review of Andrea Cohen’s Everything.
Read poetry by Andrea Cohen previously appearing in Terrain.org: one poem, four poems, seven poems, and four poems.
Header photo by Brum, courtesy Shutterstock. Photo of Andrea Cohen by Razia Iqbal.
