One of the First Places

by Matt Mason

When both your parents were dead,
you took your wife and daughters to Disneyland.

Because it made sense.
There’s a family trip
when you were four
that you remember—

not so well
with your head, it’s
one of the things
inside you,
old sparks
still warm
in your wires.

You don’t pretend to know what is
reaction and what is
accident when such normal
but extraordinary things happen
and leave your life
as something you don’t recognize.
You miss them.
You’re looking for them.

This is one of the first places
you remember seeing them.
Maybe
something’s still there.

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Matt Mason

Matt Mason is the Nebraska state poet and executive director of the Nebraska Writers Collective. He runs poetry programming for the US State Department, working in Nepal, Romania, Botswana, and Belarus. Mason is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize for his poem “Notes For My Daughter Against Chasing Storms,” and his work can be found in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. The author of Things We Don’t Know We Don’t Know (Backwaters Press, 2006) and The Baby That Ate Cincinnati (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2013), Matt is based out of Omaha with his wife, the poet Sarah McKinstry-Brown, and daughters Sophia and Lucia.

One thought on “One of the First Places”

Inga Buccella says:

June 30, 2019 at 3:54 am

This is the kind of poem that needs to be read over and over. It’s unpredictable, but has a rhythm to it.

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Vol. 2 No. 1

Summer 2019

One of the First Places

One thought on “One of the First Places”