January 2017
While my three children were young, I wrote just enough poetry to give me an inkling that I might have an aptitude for it, but I wasn’t brave enough to throw my earning potential aside until my family was grown and I’d worked for a number of years. As time went on, I came to regret not having devoted myself to writing much earlier in life. The “now or never” decision came about 20 years ago—my late-in-life career—and the process of creating a poem still gives me enormous satisfaction. I’m gratified that my poetry is widely published in the small press and equally gratified by becoming part of a larger community of writers. For my publishing credits:
lindamfischer.com
lindamfischer.com
Tracks
They slipped through an opening between jagged
hollies, stepping with care into mounting snow—
two white-tailed deer, a doe perhaps
and fawn nearly grown, for whom a wilderness
of lawns might offer forage if not refuge
from the punishing cold. I saw them from a window,
flanking one another in as intimate a gesture
as a comforting arm thrown over a friend’s shoulder,
and felt the incalculable distance between us as starkly
as if the terrain were as alien as the moon, the daily
struggle to survive as remote as human populations
ravaged by hunger and disease: fodder for newsprint
or television’s flickering images—not here.
Snow keeps falling, the click of sleet
against the window—an icy mix not once
but twice this week—deer tracks
already covered, no hint of their passing.
--first published in Mad Poets Review
©2016 Linda M. Fischer
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