Poems

My mother hated winter,
could not bear the hard blue mountains
with their frosty white crowns
and those interminable nights
when all the ghosts came to settle by the bedside

I have craved solitude
in the way that an addict knows she will die
without her chosen substance

I am a forest woman
who holds a desert within her.

Have you imagined me like a spectre
or delicate like baby’s breath, pressed
into the folds of my little handsewn books?

Bare branches become visible again
against a January sky—
the clarity of the day is harder than diamonds
and just as costly.

A cup of coffee is the holy grail in winter,
black, steaming salvation
sloshing against the rim of a sturdy, white cup
in a diner on a roadside
between the place you had to leave
and the place where your soul wants to be.