The Glacier
Issue Two
Winter 2023
The Door In the Prairie
In the part of the land
where you leave
the forest and enter the field,
we are asking, Why live?
Shrouded in widow’s cloth,
my mother’s door is so near
the threshold of trees,
the passage to other-meadow.
The wind is at our doors
this winter, for nine nights
we are reciting our plea.
The answer: a saint tapping
on invisible wood. In the night
Philomena wakes me
with her sharp triple-knock.
Maybe we will feel alive again.
In summer maybe grass will green
again and we will feed the ash
of our beloved to the ripping lake,
to the wind that toppled us.
NATALIE SOLMER is the founder and Editor In Chief of The Indianapolis Review, and is an Assistant Professor of English at Ivy Tech Community College. She grew up in South Bend, Indiana, went to Clemson University in South Carolina and majored in horticulture. Before her return to grad school and career in teaching, she worked as a grocery store florist for 13 years. Her poetry has been published in numerous publications such as: Colorado Review, North American Review, The Literary Review, and Pleiades.
Artwork by Sean Mungur.
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