Aphelion 937 AU

After so many years apart, the interval of locusts
Or memorable storms, it shouldn’t surprise me
If you turned into the wind, between the drafts,
And cut through the water, a lake trout, a triumph.
Nothing suggested an ocean. The white petals
Would never be mistaken for spume, a whale’s spittle.
You are not flying to Carbondale though you could
See each eclipse there, two when even one
Was enough to convince his people Richard III
Was a regicide. We have not written many letters
I don’t know your reasons anymore, I pretend perhaps I did.
Were your warnings necessary? I slept through the night,
Michigan like old glass, a moat, the air layered above it
Missing snow like red-faced Sedna.

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Daisy Bassen is a poet and practicing physician who graduated from Princeton University’s Program in Creative Writing and completed her medical training at the University of Rochester and Brown University. Her work has been published in Oberon, McSweeney’s, and [PANK], among other journals. She was the winner of the So to Speak 2019 Poetry Contest, the 2019 ILDS White Mice Contest, and the 2020 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize. She was doubly nominated for the 2019 Best of the Net Anthology and for a 2019 and 2020 Pushcart Prize. Born and raised in New York, she lives in Rhode Island with her family.