Categories: Willawaw Journal Fall 2019 Issue 7

Vivienne Popperl

First Winter in Kopjes, South Africa

We smell winter arrive in smoky trails of wind

lurking low over dry fields.

Grey dust fills our mouths and eyes.

I knit hats for the children,

pull them low over their ears each morning.

They always come home bare-headed.

They itch, Mama, and we can’t hear our friends

count to 100 when we hide in the ditch.

Daytime sunshine lulls us

into shucking our coats.

Sunset winds surprise us

with tremolo blasts of cold.

Evenings blaze orange and red

against a black-blue sky.

Winter nights are so dark.

Stars pierce the sky with light

as white as icicles hanging

off the roof of our old house

in Lithuania.

Vivienne Popperl lives in Portland, Oregon. Her poetry has appeared in Rain Magazine, VoiceCatcher, an online journal of women’s voices and vision, The Poeming Pigeon, Persimmon Tree Journal, and Oyster River Pages. She was honored to serve as a poetry co-editor for the Fall 2017 edition of VoiceCatcher magazine.