Lois Marie Harrod

after Ando Hiroshige

Today, the liturgy of snow,
light as stone under the pelt of a brush.

All your past becomes the sycamore
flecked cold and white in the dawn,

your brother drifts from the patient gray
gently about you, your sister’s eyes spill,

and now your father’s arm stretches along the willow
his white shirting and white chain,

Sweeping the ground, your mother,
her frozen sorrow.

And you, you are the wild duck
feathered softly as the frost,

one of two in the water moving,
your body dipping as dabblers do.

You have known all summer
the manna that feeds this chill.

You’ve known all summer
you cannot stay.

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About the author:

Lois Marie Harrod’s 16th and most recent collection, Nightmares of the Minor Poet, appeared in June 2016 from Five Oaks. Her chapbook And She Took the Heart appeared in January 2016, and Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis (Cherry Grove Press) and the chapbook How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press) appeared in 2013. The Only Is won the 2012 Tennessee Chapbook Contest (Poems & Plays), and Brief Term, a collection of poems about teachers and teaching was published by Black Buzzard Press, 2011. Cosmogony won the 2010 Hazel Lipa Chapbook (Iowa State). She is widely published in literary journals and online e-zines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. She teaches Creative Writing at The College of New Jersey. You can find links to her online work at www.loismarieharrod.org.