Susan Woods Morse

One Winter Night in Maine

We trudged up the hill to Malcolm’s field in our mittens, woolen coats,
scarves snugged at our throats, the cold a biting 10 degrees —
only the silhouettes of his dairy herd watching, tails slowly swishing
as if waiting for coming revelations,
the sky like a hammered tin lantern with the stars wheeling round and round
the blades of your ice skates, the pond circular, too, in the middle
of the Jersey herd, their dark, liquid eyes reflecting glimmers from above
and from below your whirling feet carving diamonds in the ice, your smile
drawing us in as you swooped and swirled.
We were transported by silence and light from a million finger tips
reflecting a horizon like black ocean, the air so brilliantly frozen
it hugged our very core, every minute sound revolving in hushed whispers,
in anticipation of a sort of holiness, the beauty of quiet, soft breaths
and no one else within our own private galaxy,
glistening like ice within the heavens.

Susan Woods Morse grew up in California and then moved to Maine in the early 1980’s. After thirty years of shoveling snow, she moved to the Willamette Valley in 2016 and loves it! Susan is currently a member of the OPA and of Mid Valley Poetry Society. She frequently participates in readings at the Salem Poetry Project. In the Hush, published by Finishing Line Press (2019), is her first chapbook, but individual poems have appeared in various journals such as Cream City Review, The Mom Egg, Sixfold, Amethyst Review, Willawaw Journal and Aji Magazine.