Three Poems by Margaret Coombs

 

At Midnight 

 

Billows  

of voluptuous fog 

drift through the neighbourhood. 

 

A stiff precipitation pings  

off the porch roof,  

audible only because traffic  

has slackened, 

due to glaze-slick streets, 

and a fear that the eerie mist  

blurring curbs and cloaking stop lights 

will swallow you. 

 

If you were not so happy here,  

you would leave your warm chair  

and walk in the weather  

to find her. 

 

Where did she go?  

 

The woman you used to be,  

always obeying  

the impulse to slip away,  

just to feel  

the sting of sleet  

on her skin.

 

 

 

Unexpected Snow at Night 

 

something asks me to open the door  

where early spring’s wet snow frolics, 

a curly lamb in the dark 

 

something leaps out from my body  

an awakened animal soft and wild 

willing to play   

 

maybe the sky felt the same way 

releasing the heaviness it held  

in low bloated clouds all day 

 

my front yard  

and the lit-up highway accrue  

a wealth of white flakes  

 

the neighbourhood sleeps through  

the amplitude of tenderness  

that stirs the night

 

 

 

Report from the Dark Woods 

 

When everything seems cynical  

and dire, put your faith  

 

in highway signs, in the stories told  

by white letters on evergreen panels.  

 

Let them lead you to a bridge  

over fast-dancing water,  

 

where tourist boats zip  

and great lakes blink and sparkle.  

 

Pass over undulating dunes.  

Ferns, pines, and blueberries sprout  

 

from sandy soil, touched 

by Superior’s bright hand.  

 

Peace still reigns, though war  

inflames other places.  

 

We’ll enjoy paradise 

until troops command the land.   

 

See the wing beat pointing north. 

A great egret flies nearby, 

 

another species exercising 

its freedom. Like us,  

 

he’s rehearsing the lay 

of the land.

Margaret Coombs has published poetry and short memoir pieces in journals that include Haikuniverse, Eunoia, and Moss Piglet. She is the poetry editor for The Solitary Plover, and a co-founder and editor at the Fresh Water Press, an indie  publishing company from eastern Wisconsin. She has published one chapbook under the name Peggy Turnbull with the title The Joy of Their Holiness (Kelsey Press). Her second collection, Where Sweetness Falls With the Rain, was published by Cyberwit Press. She and her husband Bob live in Manitowoc, Wisconsin.