Natalie Rice
​Image by  Joshua Woroniecki from Pixabay                                                                         
Natalie Rice is the author Scorch (2023, Gaspereau Press) and of the chapbook 26 Visions of Light (2020, Gaspereau Press). Her poems have also appeared in journals such as The Trumpeter, Event Magazine, The Dalhousie Review, The Malahat Review and Contemporary Verse 2. She currently lives in the Bow Valley, Alberta.  




Ghost River


There is a river that moves as a caddisfly. Each slow branch,
an insect on the bottom. For a moment, I was filled

with want. To look out over the foothills and see 
the ledge of the continent. How the paintbrush flower 
isn’t a flower, but red bracts. 

How the true bloom can be spotted poking out, 
a snake’s thread-thin tongue. How we ate. There is a North
Ghost and a South Ghost, both are people walking 

far away. How we cried and laughed, and I gave 
the river my face. Faint light sinking. Or how once, 

I looked through the twelve-pane window of home 
and saw water instead of glass. There are too many ways 

to not touch the earth. Back then, I thought I knew 
how to end and how to begin, but the year was already nearly gone. 






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