Today's poem is by Doug Ramspeck

Winter Harvest
       

These are mad dreams. They have
undressed themselves to empty limbs.

They have flown away. I know this
because I wake nights to hear them

skittering off. These are our dispensations:
bare feet on cold floors, bitterness

seeping through window jambs.
I dream sometimes that my mother

stands again in winter snow.
Her nightgown billows. Her thoughts

billow. Or she engages us in a series
of slow retreats. Look at how quietly

she steps away, vanishing. The dirt
in the field is attempting to harden

where she was into stone. It wants
to be permanence, forgotten.

We shouldn't underestimate the lure:
to blink and for there to be nothing

left but snow. I remember seeing blood
drops with her once in a snowstorm,

blood drops atop the snow by the river.
We bent down together. We studied

how red could be a song. And the sky
above us was another winter field.

Copyright © 2025 Doug Ramspeck All rights reserved
from The Shore
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission