HOLLY PAINTER 

CRYPTIC CROSSWORD IX

Clues:

  Poplar in grasp of kindling

  storm: sounds like the Blitz, heard

  frizzy and distorted.

  Children ease by the hundred into Sunday school

  rooms. Outside, overhead, hang

  blimpy voids, with

            cracks and gusts encircling town’s center

            as if inclined to

            release folds of rain

            in staccato needles carried by

            sheet of mist.

Answers:

  Cottonwood blizzard

            Fuzzy seeds float by windows

            like droplets on film

Holly Painter teaches writing and literature at the University of Vermont. She is the author of Excerpts from a Natural History (Titus Books). Her poetry, fiction, and essays have also been published in literary journals in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, China, and Singapore.