Five Poems by Cindy Ellen Hill

 

All Hallow's Eve

Beeswax candle gutters in the wind

as drop by drop, long iron links of rain

descend the porch posts, seeking resurrection,

called back to natal ocean once again,

 

sliding eel-like over grassy plain,

amassing rivulets across the lawn

and pooling at the leaf-clogged driveway drain,

plummeting into dark earth, and gone.

 

All Hallow's Eve, and ice will greet the dawn,

footing treacherous, split garden hoses--

hydrological phenomenon,

the way water expands when it is frozen,

 

the way that fear grows through each winter's night,

as souls await their summons to the light.

 

Hounds

I heard the hounds run late last night,

baying at an auburn moon,

dashing over frosted ridges,

frantic pulling, anxious running

after tracks of gently prancing

cloven hoof prints, spritely dancing,

dignified and proudly lighting

on the midnight whitened ground.

 

I heard the hounds run

late last night

loud and clumsy, tumbling,

baying at a distant moon.

 

March Snowfall (Spring Equinox)

 

Grey mist over mountain snow.

Grey sky over grey mist.

Crowflight startles a small branch.

White among white cascades.

 

Wet, erratic dreamlight falls

In dense walls of grey fog

Between trunks of spring-black trees.

Tracing winter’s last wave

 

In edges of cold white foam;

Slides under forest floor,

Retreats in black seas of time,

Birth-night of the season.

 

Beside the late-night burning hearth,

I dream within the one dark dream,

The white crow-dream of winter’s end,

Springtime ever-dreams of my kin:

 

            Red buds swell on thin grey branches,

            New white lambs in a red barn,

            Lifeblood of all born, creation  

            Stirs in cups of silver mist.

 

 

Picking Fiddleheads

 

Frolicking on Beltane morn

following the swaying fronds

deeper into dew-drenched dawn

searching, seeing yet another

farther from friend’s fading laughter

surrounded by the springtime silence

alone and merrily, I, singing

saw one tiny footprint, cloven

catching breath to hear the faintest

rush of leaves along the river–

a whisper of the wind

to hail a glint of golden horn

leaping through unfurling leaves;

life bursting through on Beltane morn.

 

Night Frolic

The children within us

ran rosie rings under the stars

with ashes down we fell and fell

‘till falling was the game,

tumbling arms and heavy stalks

of frost-covered goldenrod.

 

Blackness under moonless

singing voices circling steaming breath

We learned each other’s throats and tongues

and lungs and laughing,

holding hands we saw

the essence of the dark itself

through the towering pines.

Cindy Ellen Hill is a writer, musician and gardener in Middlebury, Vermont. She has authored  two sonnet chapbooks, Wild Earth (Antrim Press 2021) and Elegy for the Trees (Kelsay Books 2022). Her poetry has been published in Measure, The Lyric, Vermont Magazine, PanGaia, Sagewoman, WildEarth, Vermont Life, the Classical Poets Society, Ancient Paths, and the National Public Radio Themes and Variations program. She is presently an MFA student at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.