Poetry By Erica Anderson-Senter

Chris Bee CC




THE SLOWING 
          elegy for my Papa 

It only speeds up from here, I tell Danielle two weeks
after you die. I mean it, too, this trite observation 
on death and dying; our conversations muffled 
under muted morning clouds in October.  
                                                   Let’s instead, you
and I, remember mayflies breaking tension
of green water—delicate legs still and quiet. 

You laid heavy in the hospital bed:
your skin on your hands sank--
I don’t know how else to say it except 
your skin sank and sagged. You
looked like you but a shadow you— lips dry 
and mouth slack. 
                                              Wait, I wanted
to talk about the lake.   

Mornings hushed with fog between coves:
we’d sit, you and I, and watch the mayflies 
drunkenly bumble through this new life they’ve found:
unaware of greedy fish mouths—nothing urgent, 
just breathing. You and I, pointing out birds, waiting 
for the day to invite us in. I’m bold enough to say
that mornings belonged to us: in Tennessee, 
in Indiana, in the hospital the day you died. 

I remember your death-rattle, that forced squeal of spirit
leaving, the way your chest jerked as it slowed. 
You slowed. The slowing. I put my hands
on you—remember? 

                                              Remember the morning 
you said our Tennessee lake lived 
because we called it our own? The vast expanse
of green water as far as I could reach 
with my breath. 
                    I held you as you died--
I hold you now: dead—as far as I can reach.





ONE SMALL LETTER TO A DEAD PAPA

I told my friend Kelly about the owl I saw slipping from pine to pine 
across the alley—common variety Barred Owl: round head, large wingspan.

Kelly said, was it good to see him again? And it was. It was good to see you
all flight-feathers and elegant swoop and talon under a soft moon: October

everywhere outside of my car. 

                                                                  A red fox trotted alongside my black Honda
while I drove home the night you died: a gentle-footed reminded that this,

this way, straight ahead can be quiet and hopeful. 
                                                             How many signs, Papa,

before I calm? Maybe the fast-flitted chickadee or ironweed in purple 
pursuit of the sun or small mountains with name like Wilder or Devil’s Loop

or Pineville. Maybe these can remind me--
                                                        all aware and wide-eyed and 

searching—that clean water exists just outside of ourselves. ​





Erica Anderson-Senter writes from Fort Wayne, IN. Her first full length collection of poetry, A Midwestern Poet's Incomplete Guide to Symbolism, was published by EastOver Press in 2021. Her work has also appeared in Midwest Gothic, Dialogist, and One Art. She has her MFA from Bennington College.  
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