On a walk after sunset
Posted on | March 5, 2012 | 6 Comments
It’s cold out tonight.
The kind of cold that makes me fold my arms around myself,
feeling my pulse in my glove clad finger tips, as my breath
floats up in the air around my head like a halo or a thought caption.
My footsteps make loud sounds across the frozen ground
as I follow the dog, clipped on a length of rope I’ve wrapped around my palm.
She dashes off ahead following the wild scent of deer or squirrel or rabbit
across the pale snow. I follow after. Lurching, stopping,
feeling the way my heartbeat makes thunder in my ears.
It’s cold the way it hasn’t been all winter
and my unaccustomed cheeks burn bright,
while overhead the almost full moon, that bowl of milk,
spills its light all over.
There are moon shadows at my feet, squat and dark,
following now before, now after as I turn towards home.
The weather has been a yo-yo, indecisive, shaky in its course.
One day the road’s all mud; the next the puddles hard again
while in the woods, the trees know their certain secrets.
On the mild nights, owls fill the woods at dusk;
on the quiet days, silence.
It is the same with my heart: lifting off and landing
a thousand times right here.
Startled, steady, mild, wild.
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6 Responses to “On a walk after sunset”
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I am a writer, mixed-media artist, idea starter, stalker of wonder, finder of four leaf clovers, and mama of boys. ...{more}
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March 6th, 2012 @ 2:25 am
Moonshadow, moonshadow. I absolutely love the last stanza.
March 6th, 2012 @ 6:21 am
Gorgeous!!
March 6th, 2012 @ 8:59 am
A beautiful, and peaceful walk with you tonight. (Or, um, LAST night.) Our weather has been very much the same. Puddles and ice all through the season. I love the way you describe it. Today it will be spring, it is supposed to get up close to 60! And? The sun is already pouring in the windows!
March 8th, 2012 @ 10:40 am
And this, THIS, is why I cannot wait to read your book. You have such a gift for turning the everyday into art. Beautiful!
March 8th, 2012 @ 9:30 pm
I imagine this in a notebook being read some day by your grand daughter snuggled in blankets by a window savoring her grandmother’s words…dreaming of you …love your words love
March 15th, 2012 @ 1:37 pm
[...] a stunning poem that also inspires me to open up my notebook everywhere i go and record the little moments, bit by [...]