sheryl white

Winter Heart

I know white, its depths

sounded, its cups of husk

and seed where sparrows slip

down, lost but for a ruddy head

feather, a wisp slicked

to the bone. I know the cold

screams of jays, in pairs, in threes,

in gray air that echoes all the way

to night, a night iced black

and gloss. I know the window

on my side of the stars, the silent

chill of cheek braced to glass,

of eye open to the obvious

lie of gilded snow.                  

I know time, the muscle

of winter, its sinuous wind,

or its quiet, tender pull

on a last beaten leaf,                           

the damp breath

as it lets go.

Sheryl White is an artist and writer living in Boston. Her writing has been published in Ibbetson Street Press, Blast Furnace, Solstice Literary Journal, Poetry Quarterly, and The Boston Globe, and Halfway Down The Stairs. In 2016, she received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Poetry Finalist Grant and Mayor of Boston Poetry Program award.