Nancy Scott
Nancy Scott is the current managing editor of U.S.1 Worksheets,
the journal of the U.S.1 Poets' Cooperative in New Jersey. She has had
an eclectic career as a caseworker for the State of New Jersey providing
services to homeless families, abused and foster children, others with
AIDS and/or mental disabilities. She has also been a researcher, consultant,
building inspector, paralegal, day care director, journalist, foster mom,
real estate agent and now, in addition to her poetry, she is creating and
exhibiting her artwork. Her other poetry books include Down to the Quick
(2007) and One Stands Guard, One Sleeps (2009) both published by
Plain View Press, and a chapbook, A Siege of Raptors (2010) published
by Finishing Line Press.
The Dreamer
Her husband had been gone four days.
On the third night, she began to be afraid.
The thatched roof had sprung leaks.
The children ran with buckets to catch the torrent
of rain, which threatened the miserable cottage.
He'd promised to bring food, but now she fed
the children dandelion greens and brambleberries.
Under cover of rain, she sent the oldest boy across
the meadow to steal eggs from the neighbor's coop.
The meat, cured and hung in the larder, long gone,
her husband had set out after a fresh supply.
How many times had she begged him to find
regular work, like whipping mules at the grainery
or sorting nails for the village ironmonger?
No, he was a dreamer. He'd take a jug of malt,
a wrapper of bread and cheese, and curl up
under the bridge, sometimes for days,
waiting, hoping, for that one stray goat.
Why I'll Never Fly across Montana Again
In 1960, I boarded a milk run from Bismarck
to Portland at night in a summer storm.
I took a seat next to a cute dark-haired sailor
headed home on leave. If he told me his name,
I wasn't listening. I wouldn't let go of his hand.
The turboprop bucked like a bronco with a burr
under its saddle. We landed in Billings in a tirade
of lightning, then Butte where my sailor dashed
through hail to buy me a candy bar in the terminal.
In Helena, he kissed me good-bye and was replaced
by an elderly woman. Taking off, we skidded
on the tarmac, climbed too steeply, banked too hard;
I thought This is it. The woman reassured me,
Don't worry, honey, we'll make it, while trying
in vain to wrest her arm from my death grip.
On our approach to Missoula, we were bounced
about like popping corn, then we dive-bombed
through the clouds. No passengers got off or on.
At 4 a.m. we landed in Portland, its sky full of stars.
I was twenty-one, alive, hungry for solid ground.
I staggered into the terminal where my weary aunt
snarled, For Chrissakes, why didn't you fly direct?
Stay on the Path, Mimi
On this brilliant October afternoon,
four-year-old Leah and I
take up our branch walking sticks again
and start our trek around the small lake,
the man-made fountain rippling water in circles,
forcing squawking wild ducks to the reeds,
and the ground is covered with bright leaves,
which Leah stoops to examine,
then hands me a perfect red maple one,
and soon I'm carrying a pile of leaves,
three feathers, and my pocket jiggles
with small stones, but toadstools Leah pokes
with her stick, Don't touch, she says, they're poison,
and as we turn the next bend deep in the woods,
something crackles the underbrush, and Leah says,
There are snakes, Mimi, so stay on the path,
and she tugs on my hand, but a hundred feet ahead,
says, I'm tired, and I'm thinking how can I carry
this forty-pound child, if she can't make it?
so I ask, Can you still walk? and Leah says,
Yes, I just stay on the path, and I think how I
never followed the route laid out for me, rather
took shortcuts, diversions, for better or worse,
but as my granddaughter scampers ahead,
full of herself, the day, and the woods,
I don't want to be anywhere else
except on the path that has brought us both here.
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