Panorama

By Laura Stott

I am not Deinonychus, early Cretaceous, 
scales or feathers on my elbows, ankles, 
a fan of color around my eyes, claws that can tear out the jugular 
in any neck free of armour. Beating heart. Hunger. 
Fountain of blood spilled on the mud.
And I am not Mammuthus Primigenius.
The smell of beastly body all earth and urine, 
on a damp forest floor. A forest larger than any country or map. 
Oh, to see what the sky was like back then. I am a woman 
watching time from a hot air balloon rising. 
I can see all the moments below me. 
Each one getting smaller, crater from an asteroid, 
the dust bowl rolling away, the towers’ fall, 
the houses I once knew, I can see them too, 
tiny dots, faces gone to a blur of color 
I can’t distinguish. Voices rise as far as we may fly. 42 years. 500. 
There, that lake is now a small jewel, fluid stone. 
Water we dove into, we because it isn’t always I, 
eyes shut, nose plugged. Feel your body float 
out of summer. Open your eyes and there is the wide mouth 
of the bass, coming at you.

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Laura Stott is the author of two collections of poetry, Blue Nude Migration (Lynx House Press, 2020) and In the Museum of Coming and Going (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2014). Her poems can be found or are forthcoming in various journals and magazines, including Barrow Street, Briar Cliff Review, Sugar House Review, and Mid-American Review. She lives with her husband and daughters in northern Utah.

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