Snow — Blackbird Archive

← v14n2, Fall 2015

on the daffodils.

You wore your blue hat

to refill the bird feeder. Hulls

on the white ground. In time, the missing

are found. Sometimes not. I knew a woman

whose son, after years in an institution,

grew sane again. Hope expands and contracts,

like ice or hate. The house with no doors

becomes a tower of windows. Now I can see

the row of pear trees you planted in the dark,

your shovel arguing with earth. When the birds

returned this year, I loathed their easy migrations,

their pesky hunger. You left your hat

on the hall table. The feeder is empty. Come home.

grief loss home

Dannye Romine Powell

Dannye Romine Powell is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Nobody Calls Me Darling Anymore (Press 53, 2015). Her 1994 collection, At Every Wedding Someone Stays Home , won the First Book Award from the University of Arkansas Press. Her poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Magazine , Birmingham Arts Journal , Southern Poetry Review , Harvard Review Online , and 32 Poems , among others. She has received fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. She writes about books and authors for the Charlotte Observer . Photo by Alyssa Romine