The Snow Was Falling
by Lois Marie Harrod
like swarms
of white flies,
their white wings
a cold tissue,
their stings
a white stone.
My mouth held
your weapons,
every crumb
white and innocent,
but you too
were falling,
the sky coming down,
your cold white hand
on a wild woman,
the ancient earth.
My fingers were swelling,
the hemlock gloved
in ermine caterpillars,
I was wrapping
my heart in white leaves
like a jewel,
it was not
the heart of a doe,
and I do not know
whether there can be
such whiteness again
or whether
this is as cold
as I come.
Lois Marie Harrod’s most recent collection Nightmares of the Minor Poet appears in May, 2016. Her chapbook And She Took the Heart appeared in January 2016, and her 13th and 14th poetry collections, Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis (Cherry Grove Press) and the chapbook How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press) appeared in 2013. The Only Is won the 2012 Tennessee Chapbook Contest (Poems & Plays), and Brief Term, a collection of poems about teachers and teaching was published by Black Buzzard Press, 2011. Cosmogony won the 2010 Hazel Lipa Chapbook (Iowa State). She is widely published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. She teaches Creative Writing at The College of New Jersey.
Stacy