The Sunday Poet: Heather Nelson

Heather Nelson

Heather Nelson is a poet, teacher, mother and recovering attorney based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She studied writing under the poet C.D. Wright as an undergraduate at Brown University. Most recently she has studied poetry with Tom Daley and Barbara Helfgott Hyett. Heather's work has appeared in Constellations, The Somerville Times, The Sunday Poet, he Compassion Anthology and Ekphrastic Review.

The Leaning Tower                          

is climbed by appointment-

timed clusters of travelers wound into queues,

shuffling along the edge

of 4:30’s scorching shadow.

I am searching for Sophia

when a dark-garbed guard turns my head

with a sharp bark: Watch your son!

My blond boy as always is climbing the rails.

I spot her at last-far off

on the grass, behind the Pomodoro,

where at 4 she practiced her shaky

walk-over, dark hair sweeping the ground.

Like an umber fan, hair hid

her burning face, her trembling legs,

the trace of amused scorn at the corner

of her older brother’s mouth.

Still waiting, I’m wishing for morning

a return to the wall where they all

walked abreast, two boys and a girl,

tramping together along Lucca’s rim.

Truthfully there was morning

fighting too, over three bottles of

water, bought just for the bathroom,

spilled struggling over who gets whose first.

Lunch served us a respite under the cover

of a wide canopy, we all had room

for seven wines poured by the owner’s daughter

whose red hair wound across the label of the Rosato.

Our family runs toward noir,

thick brow and olive skin,

sister and big brother twine, arms wrestling,

each boasting a greater darkness.

The last wine served is darkest

and sweetest lingering in the late afternoon light,

blurring Sophia’s lithe and livid frame, her simmering shame,

all she is hiding in her halter of yellow flowers, daring me to find her.

--Heather Nelson