Poetry by Anne Makeever
Winter blows in late, its inevitability until now unsure. What relief
to watch a pristine obliteration of snow nearly bury the summer chairs
and limn the bare oaks that frame the cold cove.
I want to sigh over the softness, the muffling depth that quiets the day,
to feast on the fineness of black and white that turns O so heartbreakingly,
lavishly purple at dusk. Look, my eyes say, here’s beauty. I want to forget
that life is erasing. Bees, darkness, glaciers, monarchs can’t carry our weight.
The seasons shift, from white to green to orange, each a gift undeserved,
a psalm to savor.
Yes, my mother’s face was beautiful when she died, but the rupture remains.
Consolation comes in what will continue, in the scab that forms at the edge
of the tear then gives over to eventual scar.
Anne Makeever’s work appears in the Eliot Review, Plant Human Quarterly, RavensPerch, and River Styx. She holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, where she also taught poetry and essay writing. She lives in Brunswick, Maine, with her partner and exuberant dog.
