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Columnist:
Stacey Tolbert
Natalie
Graham
Native to
Gainesville
,
Florida
, Natalie Graham was born September 11, 1980. She transferred to the
University
of
Florida
from
Swarthmore
College
in 2000 to complete a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Master of Fine
Arts degree in Creative Writing. Her poems document small and often
momentary truths, leaving contours of the larger darker Truth unmapped.
CERTAIN IMMUTABLE LAWS
for David
I. There is no break in nature.
A coil of root lies at our feet,
listening like an upturned ear.
A young boy traces a stubby finger
along the Old Slave Market’s wall
of broken shells and trumpet vines.
Castillo de
San Marcos
extends
its shadow into the water.
We quicken—having spent too much time already,
having meant only to stop for lunch—
up San Marco Avenue, past the Huguenot Cemetery.
II. Nothing passes from one state to another . . .
Later, the first spectacular dollops of summer
erupt on the ashy windshield,
and we listen to the rhythms of the cracked pavement.
We hammer home, the ’47 Fleetwood an ark
for just us two. You say, Woman, I’m tired.
. . . without passing through all intermediate states.
At the edge of dawn the interstate lightens before us,
and already heat rises off the mirage of grease.
Farther off, grief finds us weathered.
The months are long in this flat, hot state;
but they pass.
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