JAQI HOLLAND

SPRING/SUMMER 2022 ISSUE #04 POET

JAQI HOLLAND is a poet, essayist, copyeditor, and higher education professional living in Salem, Massachusetts, who strives to pin down ephemeral moments in nature. She gravitates to wooded trails, pockets of moss, and moments of stillness and wonder explored both in the natural world and in poetry and prose. Her work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, The Ekphrastic Review, Brevity & Echo, Plenty Magazine, and Plant People: An Anthology of Environmental Artists.

DRY SPELL

You tend the spiny succulent in sandy soil,

clay pot perched on the sill,

fretting over water—

how much, how often—

angling its newer tender, velvet leaves

to the sun after detecting

a draft with the back of your hand,

then pruning the shriveled leaf

clinging to the stem, while I

recall its stalwart cousin

poking straight up from the desert,

defenseless, in heat so absolute

that its prickly pads bead with sweat,

not worried one bit about drying up or

dying before the next rain

for it has always come.