Poetry by Russell Rowland
Hand it to the blank slate
of new snow—entire days could be written on it.
There’s plenty of page for me
and the child, with her closer-spaced footwriting.
If it’s a long walk we take, and we turn
to look behind, we discover
we wrote exactly that: “Love took a long walk.”
The tiny fieldmouse’s penmanship
is a fine hand, its thin tail writing a narrow line;
correct footprint punctuation—“I’m
easily overlooked, and thank you very much.”
A snowshoe hare leaves a lot of white spaces,
scrawling “Fox alert!” in haste.
Ethereal deer have a streamlined logo. It reads,
“No comment.”
Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, where he has judged high-school Poetry Out Loud competitions. His work appears in Except for Love: New England Poets Inspired by Donald Hall (Encircle Publications), and Covid Spring, Vol. 2 (Hobblebush Books). His latest poetry book, Magnificat, is available from Encircle Publications.
