Heidy Steidlmayer

Mornings, the body’s old winter monochrome gives its image of extraordinary cold to a million hives— I could imagine a lanthorn as it swallows its strange light and gleams from within as if reborn when the bees come.

stand as clocks fully struck in fields of fading flowers— when the fires of summer come they will gather up the hours of rains past, frost endured and famished stalks in full gale that begin their telling once all forms of telling fail

I have seen the arrested shrub inform the crag with grief. Lichens crust the rocks with red. Thorns punctuate the leaf. Sorrow is not a desert where one endures the other— but footing lost and halting step. And then another.

When the moon’s worn scutcheon touches the flint-gray flood, I will lave him in foxglove and vetch until the blood of his wretched heart heals. Without a scar, he stood— as the men make their way into the quaking wood.

The pull of guns I understand, my father taught me hand on hand how death is. Life asserts. (Best take it like a man.) I shot a dove, the common sort and mourned not life but life so short that gazed from death as if unhurt. And I had nothing to report.

Midwinter, the crows take their darkness out on day. A thin rain falls and breaks. I wonder at the way the oaks unravel here (and travel word of mouth) another year. Not going, I go south.