Friday, January 29, 2016

POEM FOR JANUARY

Thin Ice
   by Ellen Doré Watson


Reedy striations don’t occlude the beneath—
earthy mash of leaves, flat pepper flakes, layered,

tips protruding, tender-desolate above a mirror
surface, gently pressing on horse-mane, nest material,

tickle-brush, fringe. Buff block-shapes further down,
ghost-bits of green-green, a lone leaf burned white.

My thrown stone skitters on ice. The next, larger,
plunks through and for a moment I am a violator

but then I see it opened a bubble cell, a city,
a lesion, a map—the way in cold and luminous.





Ellen Doré Watson 
is the author of Dogged Hearts (Tupelo Press, 2010). 
She’s the director of The Poetry Center at Smith College 
and lives in Conway, Massachusetts.

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