Wide Water

by Margaret Donovan Bauer

The first time I stepped in
the house on the river I
saw the wide water and
turned to my love

Get me this house, I
hissed in a whisper, not
wanting to show the
owners my love.

I love the wide water
outside my broad windows,
a view that recalls a
childhood of love.

From south Lou-zi-ana
to North Carolina
with stops in between
I searched for true love.

A man from Wyoming
where water is shallow
heard my heart’s wish for
a house on the water.

He got me that house and
we made it a home for
his kids to come visit
to share in our love.

A native of South Louisiana, Margaret Donovan Bauer is the Rives Chair of Southern Literature and Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. In 2017, she received the North Carolina Award for Literature for her two decades as editor of the North Carolina Literary Review. She is also the author of four books on Southern writers, most recently A Study of Scarletts: Scarlett O’Hara’s Literary Daughters, but since that book, she has turned to writing a memoir about growing up in South Louisiana. Read her essays and poems previously published in Deep South here.