Three poems by Cindy Hunter Morgan

Poetry – Issue 9 | May 2010

Elegy

The wind blew all night,
the ice on the lake
drove cracks into itself –
sudden, deep, alien
groans of expansion –
while the oaks moaned
an old hymn from
The Snow Maiden.
We woke in the morning to
branches scattered across
the yard, white pine needles
poking through snow
like a village of teepees
buried beneath drifts.
The dog plowed his nose
in the fluff, sniffing for the
smoke of smothered fires.
We dropped to our knees,
dug with bare hands,
calling Hello! Hello!,
looking for arms or legs,
broken pottery, pemmican
drying on a rack.
After heavy snow,
anything is possible:
the sudden appearance
or disappearance
of whole civilizations,
an entire village blown to you
from storms that began
in another century, from winds
that won’t stop singing
the ancient music of lost tribes.

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Cindy Hunter Morgan loves topo maps, compasses, old boots, and clean socks. She has traveled in Greece, Italy, Switzerland, and Scotland, and once spent the night on a rocky cliff above the Mediterranean Sea, outside a village in the Peloponnese. In the morning, she rode to the train station in the back of an unmarked taxi, next to several chickens. At night, she sometimes runs her son’s model train to hear the rhythmic click of wheels on track, to see the lights glow in the cars, and to pretend she is tucked inside with her head pressed to the window, looking out at the dark landscape of her home. Her poems have appeared in Bateau,The Christian Science Monitor, The Driftwood Review, Tar River Poetry, and West Branch.

Read our current issue, Issue 9 | May 2010:

Literary Bohemian

Poetry – Issue 9 | May 2010