Light a candle. Open a door
Too small to walk through. In

The already not yet, a voice
Calls from the woods: barely

Sounding bird or bobcat, a fawn
Like the one we cut loose from the fence

Six months ago, its mother a shadow
Still among trees. Now

When we step outside she doesn’t
Startle but lifts her head

And keeps chewing. It was the hymns
My mother loved, singing

Come, then waiting. Listening, we flash
Lights down the mountain. The cry

Becomes silence. Maybe
Comfort has arrived. Maybe not.

 

 

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Katharine Coles’s tenth collection of poems, Time and Chance, will be released in 2025 by Turtle Point Press. She has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NSF’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, the NEA, and the NEH.

 

 

 

Photo by David Tomaseti on Unsplash