AFTER THE STORM
After the storm
they venture out,
she and the big black dog
who breaks trail with broad chest
cresting through virgin white.
He pauses with lolling tongue
and steaming breath
to plunge nose first,
snuffling down
to the subnivean layer
honeycombed with vole tunnels
shadowed by ermine.
Late afternoon rays paint the path.
Shades of peach
blush across arched drifts,
staining blackberry brambles vermilion
and softening stark columns of birch.
A tattered raven floats above
as twilight traces the travelers
through a field
fisted with snowcapped crowns
of Queen Anne’s lace
and crooked crab apples
that claw at the dusk.
Snow devils bully them home,
twisting and dancing
as dark descends.
Later,
hungry deer will tiptoe,
silently following the easy way
to feast on wintered fruit.
WINTER DAYS
In winter
there are days
she hunkers down in bed,
cocoons under layers
of eider and flannel,
and coils into herself;
rounded haunches,
knees to chest,
toes tucked in.
Comforted in darkness
she dreams she is pupa;
breath waiting beneath
her carapace,
soft velvet wings
wrapped ’round.
She is that pause,
that stillness,
before release.
WHAT REMAINED
I found what remained
of the porcupine.
Pelt peeled,
defending quills
faced down,
vertebrae intact to tail,
pale peachy-cream
of fresh bone unveiled
beneath a hemlock tree.
Telltale tracks
of feasting fisher and raven abound.
A scene of such
violence and necessity
scattered on the white,
white snow.
Sally Cornwell is a naturalist, potter, and poet. She lives in a late 1700s farmhouse in Brookfield, New Hampshire, surrounded by fields, forests, and wetlands overlooking Lake Winnipesaukee and the encircling mountains, with miles of trails to explore just outside her door.