Maggie Koger

It might be as far as a lakeside outcropping.
It might be as close as an irrigation canal.
An oncoming whisper of white. Name it snow
if you’re porous, but it’s not just snow.
It’s the quiet whoosh of a new winter’s

blowzy ice crushing the end of autumn’s fall
a sour lick of lemony leaves left in its shadow.
It’s that one time when you stumble into a pile
tripping over a crumpled patch of loneliness
the love you were born into crushed
drowned by the bitter leaves he left you.

Imagine a woman ready to harvest her garden
white frost cloaking the raspberry thorns.
She plucks and stows ruby fruit and juice
mingled with blood from her scratches
red whispers in the raspberry basket, ones

she’ll mash in a colander or a clutch of cloth
something to wrap around her jerry-rigged hopes.
Fruit pressed into juice for diamonds of jelly
spangled in Grandmother’s precious crystal
set on a holiday table where chatter like snow
settles in pale shimmers on her lonely shoulders.

She might be as close as an irrigation canal.
You might be as far as a lakeside outcropping
hearing the whoosh of an oncoming storm
winter’s rage swathing the sour lick of lemony
leaves under a layer of ashen white snow.