Marjorie Moorhead
Because an invitation…
Because I’m up before the dawn,
I see rosy clouds appear as sun breaks.
Because it is late November,
all is couched in a hazy cold moisture cluster;
festering, gathering, waiting for weight
to bring it down as snow.
Few leaves hanging on.
Most have hit the earth,
skittered and clattered dryly away.
Now tree skeletons stand tall and proud,
showing beautiful silhouettes
on a cold air screen.
Will they get a blanket?
How thick will it be?
A many snowflake’d quilt, joined in unique pattern.
Because I worry about such things
I think about the shoveling out,
and the shuttering in.
Because it seems like old school survival;
boots pulled over wool,
ear flaps, gloves, scarves,
tissues and hot soup at hand.
Will the frail and infirm survive?
To be warmed by Spring
and hear it’s song?
Because an invitation is on it’s way
for the hardy.
Marjorie Moorhead‘s poem “Starlight in My Pocket” appeared in the HIV Here & Now project annual run-up to World AIDS Day in 2017. Her poem “Wandering the Anthropocene” is included in the anthology A Change of Climate (Independently published, 2017) edited by Sam Illingworth and Dan Simpson to benefit the Environmental Justice Foundation. Her poems will appear in the anthologies Birchsong: Poetry Centered in Vermont, Vol. 2 (Blueline Press, 2018) and in the Opening Windows Fourth Friday Poets collection forthcoming from Hobblebush Press in 2018. Marjorie lives in New Hampshire near the Vermont border.
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