Northbound Single-Lane by Marsha Mathews

From the moment Mathews as a little girl injects a grasshopper with red dye, she has us on her side. And we stay there as she falls in love, is left for another woman, and settles into raising two little girls alone. The lady can sing– witness these examples: “How can I think of anything/ but him? He sits across the boat/ from me casting his reel,/the hair on his wrist/curling madly.” “You snuggle/into this complacency/till one day/the person you love most/averts his face.” And she doesn’t limit herself to the simple emotions. Take the moment she’s picturing her ex-husband with her replacement: “The children…/cling and cry, and fight for my lap./As I dress them for bed, I realize/ something is gone from my touch.” As her title promises, Mathews does travel north, to Virginia, but in the end returns her to her Florida home where, with her father gone, she hears her own voice, perhaps for the first time. Here’s how she describes it: “Tones draw into the seawall’s hollows,/lamp shells, which cluster/ & shine like pearls,/holding off everything/ that is empty.” How beautiful.

–Lola Haskins, author of eight books. Her two recent titles are “Still the Mountains” and “Wild Angels, Fifteen Florida Cemeteries.”