poems by betsy reeder

When September blues and cools
Expands with the scent of wine
Room is readied for a speck of hawk
blown out of the North
Yielded at last to its sweet undying hunger
for height
Each feather spread trembling to its own
precise geometry that commands
LIFT
Unflapping flight
Slow spirals to outer space
Shadows transparent as water spilling
down ripples of mountains
Speed soundless and lethal as the strike
of a snake

Ecstatic journey or solemn ritual
Either of uncompromised faith

Winter’s Pocket

 Geese gather and fly
Hawks, too
Swans follow across a seamless November sky
Last flight trailing the sun south;
Abbreviated afternoons
Shadows reach like icy tentacles
Slink into polar nights--

Without warning
The garden collapsed in a tangle of death.

I stare out the window still surprised
As melancholy slips in, under the door
Settles in securely as a cat before a fire;

Glancing over my shoulder for those gone
Looking in the bottom of a cereal box
Beneath the couch for love unbitten by frost;
Sag beneath the weight of a worn mantle
Cloak of established career
Familiar routine
Complacency
Sleep.

Yet every so often
Honeyed heat from a pellet stove
Smell of cider or smoke
Or cloves
Edges of fire on evening clouds
Greetings from a pup aglow with bliss&
The old joy bubbles up unbidden
Welcome as a lover at the door
A forgotten chocolate
Pulled from winter’s pocket.

T