Poems of Place & Displacement

Deer Isle Winter

Plows and cinder trucks.
Road grit spoiling the pristine white,
pushing two feet into lawns
before spring rake-up begins.
The scrape of Will Morey's plow blade
before first light, banking snow on snow
high as a car over bulb beds,
around well markers, before his regular job
at the boat yard begins.
A flock of robins stay for bumper crops
of blueberries, cranberries, peck on what's left:
frozen apples--yellow, red--in leafless trees.
A woman rises before mourning dove or crow,
turns on the kettle, measures, stirs,
unloads the dish drainer, sets table.
Bread and bacon warm the kitchen.
All the colors of winter conspire to beauty.
Purples, orange, pinks wash the tide,
glaze the cove's mud flat puddles
where gulls gather to fish and drink.
Though darkness arrives before supper,
it is not dull. The great first star--
close enough to pluck, then thousands more
raise the sky to a bold, transcending clarity.
 






Photo Credit: US National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration



Copyright 2002, 2007,  Norma Voorhees Sheard

Norma Voorhees Sheard was born and bred in rural New Jersey.  She received a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Poetry Fellowship before moving to Deer Isle, Maine, in 1999.  A recipient of a Millay Colony Fellowship, she has published in many journals, including New York Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, Paterson Literary Review, US 1 Worksheets, and Eggemoggin Reach Review. "Deer Island Winter" first appeared in Animus #8.



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