“Moss Lake”

This poem fills my mouth with everything I crave—beauty, bread, and stillness.

—Nora Barlow

I eat this silence
like bread.

The white lake
replaces my head

I am cold & calm
as the untracked snows.
 

 
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Maureen N. McLane is the author of three collections of poetry, Same Life (FSG, 2008), World Enough (FSG, 2010) and This Blue (FSG, 2014). Her book My Poets (FSG, 2012), a hybrid of memoir and criticism, was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography.

Nora Barlow is an editorial assistant at FSG.

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