Emily Rosko

First Lesson

At the end of our childhoods, the forest thinned. The pine-needle-coated-ground
gave way to gravel, then concrete ahead. We dragged our feet to make a trail, in case
we could return. Bird-rustle in the high branches. Tiptoed closer past the canopy,
toward the open wind. We looked back to where we had been: the trees
dematerialized to ones and zeroes, a fine mist settling in. Caught, we thought, one
last glimpse of the fox seeking sun in the rain; or, was it a trick of light playing on
the coarse woody debris? We turned up our collars, our jackets too short now at our
wrists. Thought, for a moment, we could sing our way back in: cedar, linden, ash, and
beech. At once, a chorus of squirrel-screech ushered us out, and then we knew.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Emily Rosko is the author of two award-winning poetry collections, Prop Rockery (University of Akron Press, 2012) and Raw Goods Inventory (University of Iowa Press, 2006). Additionally, she is the editor of A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line (University of Iowa Press, 2011). Her poems have been published in AGNI, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Denver Quarterly, Laurel Review, New Orleans Review and Pleiades, among others. She earned a MFA at Cornell and PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Missouri. She is associate professor of English at the College of Charleston and the poetry editor for Crazyhorse.