Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb
Winterkill
What a wicked day. Stray steps whisper
on cobblestone, the snow-padded path
winding beneath ghostly elms. Leafless,
they stand in the town square. Quiet souls
walk through mists of mundane lives
as saints flee. I feel fateful, watch traffic
rumble past, each vehicle with its curled
passenger facing frontal curves of glass
within. Outside, softness gently slips
by the tip of my nose, like a white leaf
adrift in cold breeze, or an ice-colored rose
petal, then one other and yet another still
until a shower of feathers falls slantwise
caught by winter’s deep chill. Above,
nestled into the naked crotch of one tree,
a hawk shifts position; its talons clutch
life barely noticed and angel light—
such is the touch of the death of a dove.
Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb’s work has appeared in Foliate Oak, Spectrum, The Broken Plate, Jelly Bucket, Dark Matter: A Journal of Speculative Writing, Spillway Magazine, Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments, Pedestal Magazine, The Blueline Anthology (Syracuse University Press), The Fine Line, Wilderness House Literary Review, Entelechy: Mind & Culture, Poydras Review, Concho River Review, Midwest Quarterly, Amarillo Bay, Red River Review, and many other journals, with work forthcoming in the anthology 200 New Mexico Poems (scheduled for publication by University of New Mexico Press) and The Voices Project. Her poem, “Molts,” was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She holds an MA from Prescott College and is co-founder of Native West Press—a 501(c)(3) nonprofit natural history press.