Grace Mattern
Midnight
Sharp shadows
slash the yard, squares
of window on carpet
a whole moon
mirror of distant, careless
fire, cold witness
to hours endured
pacing outside your bed’s
soft box, common fear
carried through each room
as night flickers
and time spills its ash.
Now the walls shift.
Now you walk that line.
Bouquet for the Kitchen Table
A lamp by the neighbor’s
front steps laps
into a shallow pool
the sliced moon slits
on its way to setting.
Three more nights
and this wide window
will be dark, the lit face
turned away. The cardinal
returns with morning,
lights in the apple tree
as I approach with clippers.
Blizzard Moon
Clouds race, storms primed
to collide, sweeping the each
into the vast. Snow
has its own code, swallows
light, blind windows
pleated white, eyes
shuttered. I fold fresh
towels, unfold them to wipe
footprints from your floor,
the tempest tracked
indoors. You reach for sleep,
brace as wind and ice
break over your body’s sashes
and clatter against glass.
Grace Mattern’s poetry and prose have been published widely, including in The Sun, Calyx, Prairie Schooner, and Yankee. She’s received fellowships from the New Hampshire State Arts Council and Vermont Studio Center and was nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes. Her book, The Truth About Death, won the NH Readers’ Choice Award for Outstanding Work of Poetry in 2014. She served as the executive director of the NH Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence for 30 years. You can find more of her writing and samples of her art at www.gracemattern.com.