Margaret Hasse
mmhasse@gmail.com

Winter Blessing
​

Snow saddles the palomino ponies 
which the cold jockey 
of winter rides.                      
One dowdy old mare 
wears an uncurried undercoat.
She nudges broken bales of hay, 
chews placidly, her teeth 
pegged like piano keys.                     
        
When I enter the paddock 
as a woman dissolving
into the grey landscape
of middle age, 
she lifts her long face to show 
the coal of curiosity
and the white crescents 
of doubt in her eyes.

From a grave stillness,
her whole body startles.          
Rotating on a back hoof,
she aims toward the open gate. 
She bucks, blasts gas 
and flashes the willow switch 
of her tail reminding me 
of the spunk a girl takes 
to grow old.

-reprinted from Milk and Tides



Radiance


The Roman candle of a yard light
    caramelizes the old snow.
The glow trespasses the dark hold 
    of December, dimming the view 

of the night sky with its winter
    triangle a boy strains to see 
through the haze, as he lets his jacket
    hang open, unzipped to the cold.

He knows to return through 
    the black cleft between buildings, 
below electric wires that seem 
    to carry a little train of snow 

on their slim rails, where he throws 
    the switch that shuts off the bulb 
on its pole, that opens the dome
    to a blast of stars in outer space,

to the redbud of Jupiter and its rings,
    to the constellation of Orion hunting
the Great Bear that the boy follows 
    to find a smudge of gray––he can gaze

through that peep hole to another 
    galaxy also spangled with radiance
from stars that traveled from there
    two and a half million light years

before appearing in his moist eyes
    blurred by the sting of cold air.
His chest is hot and humming
    like a high voltage power box. 

-reprinted from Earth’s Appetite



Lake Watch in Winter

As ice fishermen 
abandon their shanty 
for the day
two red lights that burned 
all night like the eyes
of a creature
blink out at dawn.
 
Morning lays torn strips 
of blue shadow 
on the frozen lake 
while the sun threads
white needles
through the trees.

In the afternoon 
bandits in black masks
ride the silver zippers
of their snowmobiles
across the lake’s broad back.

At dusk, a herd 
of six deer pass 
the stubble of reeds, 
the messy huts 
of muskrats, 
leave heart-shaped
hoofprints
in the snow.

-reprinted from Earth’s Appetite