Large shapes shy and neigh on the edges
of our circle. An outline across
the flames is you, beneath blankets,
unwilling to face night’s sure vast loss.
Morning’s approach is less heard than felt.
A silent crescendo, a change
in the air, a long breathless sigh.
The horses, knowing dawn, further range.
Then I see, beyond our fire’s reach,
the frost sparkling in short grass,
glistening like snail tracks in the moon’s
still light, brightest on its last pass.
You, also, sense the ordinary
and wake with day. The moonlight pools
in the hollows of your face, fire leaps in your widened eyes. We are fools.
Melissa C. Johnson
Melissa C. Johnson is Professor and Chair of the Department of Focused Inquiry in the University College of Virginia Commonwealth University. Previously, Her work has been published in Borderlands, Waccamaw, Kakalak, The Connecticut Review, Farmer’s Market, The Potomac Review, The Cortland Review, NELLE, Green Briar Review, and other journals. Her chapbook, “Looking Twice at the World” was a winner in the 2007 South Carolina Poetry Initiative Chapbook Contest and was published by Stepping Stones Press at the University of South Carolina in 2008. A second chapbook, “Cancer Voodoo,” is forthcoming from Diode Editions in 2021.
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