At last it isn’t snow. Still, too wintry
to go back to sleeping in their unheated upstairs
quite yet. Up before daylight, shivering, she
builds the fire across the pelted room stoking
hardwood pallets he sawed before his operation
to see them through now the woodpile’s gone.
Flickers under the stove door cast a thin dawn.
Soon their breakfast water will boil and call
through their covers above the driving rain.
Winds within the stove and outside make one roar.
Sparks surround and entrance them with their own
old sounds. Through sashes to the east she watches
what she heard in the dark – day – breaking wide,
cold to the bone, and wetter than wet out.
Wild trees and bushes swim and thrash
all the way down the field over his mountain
of a shoulder, last of night silhouette, swelling
then sinking into the panes.
Pat Ranzoni lives in Bucksport. Her most recent collection of poetry is “Only Human” published by Sheltering Pines Press.
In coming editions of Monday’s Discovering section, UniVerse will offer a poem grown from the experience of Maine, by poets of the present and past. UniVerse editor Dana Wilde of the BDN staff holds a doctorate in literature and creative writing. He has taught, written and lectured internationally on poetry as a college professor and Fulbright scholar.
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