Nancy Fletcher Cassell

Black Waterfall, Yellowstone


It is the falling time,
everything loosens its grip,
each small release happens again and again.
A curtain of leaves scrambles over hard ground.
I stare at the massive black drop of rock, the water
falls a long distance to reach barren trees
tumbled like a game of pick up sticks at the base. 
All things that call us by name lie here in this October place.
The passing of my mother, the root and mask of my life,
even the snow blinding us as we rode over the mountain pass,
where I believed I could rise higher than life itself. 


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Nancy Fletcher Cassell is a writer and visual artist. Her poems have appeared in Water-Stone Review, Heartland Review, Bigger Than They Appear: Anthology of Very Short Poems, (Accents Publishing) and in Still: The Journal. For her visual work she has received the Al Smith Fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council, grants from The Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Southern Arts Federation/NEA and Art Matters.


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