My thanks to Red Eft Review and editor Corey Cook for publishing my poem today.
On our evening walk we hear them
in a stand of oak and pine—the female’s
breathy notes; the male’s answer, deeper,
like tones blown across a stoneware jug.
Before their sortie over snowy fields
they whisper greetings to their mates—
an alliance voiced in shadow. Our breath
clouds in the twilight.
A beautiful, wintry vignette by Bronwen Griffiths.
She wanders the fields where the elms once stood. Nothing stands there now, only the winter grass and a cold wind barreling down the hill to the broken willow. Close to the edge of the stream, she dives into her coat pocket for the seeds and crumbs she keeps. She will wait for them to arrive; their fluttering wings matching the fluttering in her heart. No one knows she comes down here, day after day. Especially when the snows come, especially then. She won’t worry. Her feet have trodden these paths for eighty years — they belong to her now. Like the fox that passes each evening, they inhabit her dreams.
Originally published in Worthing Flash
Bronwen Griffiths is the author of, A Bird in the House, 2104, Not Here, Not Us – stories of Syria, 2016, and Here Casts No Shadow, 2018. Her flash fiction, short stories and poems have been widely published. When writing this piece, Bird Woman, she was thinking of the walks she did as a child and a teenager growing up in North Worcestershire. She now lives on the East Sussex – Kent border.
“deer… like skeletons.”
—Dorothy Wordsworth
Yes. Like skeletons this winter,
stealing silage meant for cattle
though it starves them.
They look wistful at the forest’s edge.
I want to coax them to my fire
before the wind tonight and snow,
more snow.
Some will fawn in spring if they survive.
We shall shrug off matted coats,
graze among the daffodils.
– Sarah Russell
First published in Eclectica
He holds vigil in a ravaged tree,
his fields, once tall with corn,
now snow-tipped stubble.
He accepts the unforgiving wind,
the cold, thin light – not wishing
for tomorrow or warmth or spring –
alive only in what is.
I close my eyes, clear my mind
of stubble in my own fields,
gather Now around me like feathers,
like breath.
When I look again, he rises
on fierce, decisive wings –
his crimson tail as brilliant in the January sky
as truth.
Sarah Russell
First published in Prey Tell
Sarah Russell Poetry 