Bonnie Larson Staiger
A Second Finding
after Emily Dickinson

You launched a sturdy ship
. steered from your second-story port
embarked on mystery.
Never knowing, ever hoping your cargo
. would reach us – who keep watch
at a harbor a hundred years away.
Between sight and insight, you sailed
. into afternoons’ light – a yellow sea
of immortality beyond your west window.
About the writer:
Bonnie Larson Staiger is North Dakota Associate Poet Laureate, an ND Humanities Scholar, recipient of the 2018 ‘Voices of the Plains and Prairies Poetry Award’ (NDSU Press) for her debut collection, Destiny Manifested which also won the Independent Press Award: Distinguished Favorite. Her second book, a full-collection titled In Plains Sight, is forthcoming from NDSU Press in 2021. She often writes about life on the high plains of the New American West as well as a world view observed from and shaped by that place.
Image: Broken Dialogue by Ezequiel Jimenez. Acrylic, ink, pencil on hard plywood panel mounted on wood. 31 x 48 inches. 2015. By free license.