Every morning and evening, I walk in the woods. Most days I sense animals ignoring me and going about their lives behind my back. At times I could swear there’s also the spirit of someone I grieve . . . whole realms I’m simply blind to. Thanks to a prompt by artist/poet Kathy Peterson, I wrote “back turned” in response to Rene Magritte’s “L’ami intime (The intimate friend)” to take on this invisible, ethereal presence.

rose auslander lives on Cape Cod and is addicted to poetry and nature (not necessarily in that order). Her book Wild Water Child won the Bass River Press Poetry Contest, and her poems appear in the Berkeley Poetry Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Hunger Mountain, New Ohio Review, Rhino, and others.

W: https://roseauslander.wordpress.com/