Writer
Illustration by Katharina Davoudian and Sandro Spagnolo
“Night Hiking by Simcoe County” (After Robert Frost)
Vera Nekrasovsky
June 2, 2024
The difference I never understood
To be so vast and startlingly stark
Between the darkness of an older wood,
And lazy shadows of a tame, worn city park.
The last like sleepy spectres seem to drift
Yielding to headlights of each quickly passing car;
They are the sparser sort that shyly aside shift
Upon the lighting of a small cigar.
The first and foremost is a different matter;
It puts to shame the feeble efforts of the last
My lamp could easily bend and twist and shatter,
For this one pools around the golden ring we cast
As oceans cross their arms round bubbles of air:
By fractions of a second kept at bay,
Before the fragile membranes cannot bear
How much the tons of water on them weigh
And burst and let them fill their pockets in.
Vera Nekrasovsky is a Canadian student of English and History who was born in Israel but grew up in Canada. Previously, her poem “Sweets for the Starving Sparrow” was published in the Trinity Review in January 2021. She likes writing nature poems with a surreal twist.