Aging In Place

by paula reed nancarrow

after william stafford

Here are twin beds in the living room beneath the bay window beds bought for daughters, now their own.

And here is a pill box on their

curved windowsill. An owl paperweight

A hanky. A water glass. A crystal snail.

Upstairs is a lost land, like the past

and the finished basement.

The vast sea of choices. What the snail meant.

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Paula Reed Nancarrow is a Minnesota poet and winner of the Winter 2020 Sixfold Poetry Prize. She has a doctorate in Victorian religious literature but has always managed to find work anyway. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Cider Press Review, Plainsongs, and The Southern Review.