Winter

The way we talk through storms,
sorting sounds
after the roads have stilled:

woodpecker,

wind chimes,
the black scrape of crows,
tiny songs of the smaller birds—
(I am a tiny song too)

It takes a good snow to slow the noise,

with time and a hot cup in hand.

This one sounds like cow bells,

but the cows are gone,
pastures are houses now.
Maybe the bells stayed behind.

Drops from melting ice

(I am a kind of ice)
My breath in fogs,
seeing it leave,
one breath less
one breath less.

The snow was blue once

well past midnight
and under the moon
I rode bareback,
warm smell of winter fur,
the snow muffled his hooves,
horse breath
my breath

Our path would be covered by dawn.

 

                                                            Cheryl Emerson

                                                            January, 2014

Tanglewood

Because music was never like this
and won’t be again.
Before the first note,
the surprise of it—

you know it as home,

variable as August evenings,

            the mix of winds,
            cut grass and sometimes
            the sea—

Because it ends, as things do,
mixing with night
and gone—

We call them movements,

implying relocation—

what the last note

leaves.

                                     C. Emerson

                                      January, 2014

Solitude

I would like to be lonely now,

to wonder what it all meant; 

to sift the hoard, slowly.

You do these things alone 

on days that are gray or blue,

under trees that are bare 

or still raining their leaves—

if you catch one 

still in the air,

a leaf that would never touch ground 

‘til the questions are answered

and the pages are full. 

                                         Cheryl Emerson

11/9/2013



Carl Sandburg's chair,
Flat Rock, North Carolina

Like This

A day that reminds you of what you dreamed,

that life would be like this:

leaves on a path under bicycle wheels. 

I remember being young,

when the wooly bear would tell you

precisely how long the winter would be. 

You memorized the clouds

like a song you hoped 

would rise in your mind at dawn,

for the part of you that’s given to sound:

all you thought before everything else, 

the sense of stillness when you stared at the sky,

that life would be like this,

if you could last just long enough. 

                                                Cheryl Emerson

                                                11/2/2013

 

Connemara