SHERWOOD ISLAND 

What sound does a fiddler crab make? Clay asks
as we paddle by the marsh’s shores. After rain,
the grass’s green defines green. Nearby,
the train bears sound away in one long note.
We saw five deer on our evening bike, one of which
the man feeding her believed to be his late wife.
He places anti-tick medicine into the feed.
He keeps her coat clean. The fiddler crabs retreat
so fast from passing boats that, to see them,
I must slow to near-stillness. If I can exist less,
might the world express itself more? The osprey song
we hear is one long call of alarm. To tread lightly
is, perhaps, a mistaken charter. We are so heavy.
The prow of my kayak makes a black cloud
each time it scrapes the shallows. The woodchuck,
the crab, a hole left behind in my mind more than
the actual animal. The man feeding his wife by hand
knows something we have forgotten. The world
does not separate so cleanly from our presence
as we might hope. We move. We live.
We tread heavily with love.

Stephanie Niu is a poet and writer from Marietta, Georgia. Her first full-length poetry collection, I Would Define the Sun, won the inaugural Vanderbilt University Literary Prize. She is the author of the chapbooks Survived By (Host Publications, 2024), and She Has Dreamt Again of Water (Diode Editions, 2022). Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review, Literary Hub, Copper Nickel, Ecotone, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.