In high-summer evening-light four barefoot Amish/ kids bend, pulling weeds from their garden./ My mother looks at them from the car window, smiles/ at the young woman on the porch who holds a baby close.
There’s something happening, don’t you think?/ Do you feel it under the brown crusted snow,/ under the wanting to break sky.
I’m so low on the priority list/ I’m almost trackless./ I don’t use stealth./ I don’t scramble my signals./ I don’t have a double message.
I try to see what’s before me, hold close/ the light as the light is, as it makes its/ diminishing way toward Solstice.
The peony buds swelled for days/ as the ants unfastened the blooms/ now a shower has left them/ lying open in the grass.
I met you after school/ where you told me you’d be waiting./ Your sweaty fingers encircled my wrist/ pulling me through the thicket and/ as I watched pink splotches arise on my bare legs/ I envied your long pants.
Eyes closed at first,/ wintering inside the earth,/ black matted fur/ dampness pressing soft eyelids/ shut to outlast frost/ heaving around him.
a light sparkles/ a tiny diamond/ from a house/ across the river/ through winter woods/ the other side of town…
I was driving through the fields of Heaven when I realized I was still on Earth, because Earth was all I had ever known of Heaven and no other place would do for living forever.
Former Middlebury resident Susan Jefts has published a new book of poetry, “Breathing Lessons,” put out by Shanti Arts.
“The roof has come off the church/ and rain is falling in the baptistry.”
Most of the time the dark waters will rise,/ then fall into sun and birdsong, everything/ glistening, vivid as broken glass in fresh mud…
I was going to explain why I’m repelled by children/ who have been taught to say all the right things/ about Edward Hopper’s night café—some paintings/ need to be earned and this is one of them— but here,/ instead, are three stanzas about Iceland.
It was twilight all day./ Sometimes the smallest things weigh us down,/ small stones that we can’t help/ admiring and palming.
A Poet, In a Field Near Robert Frost’s Cabin, Lifts Enormous Boulders with his Mind
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