Winter, Cross Quarter Day—Beeches, Cracked Grass, and Crows

​Katie Nordt LaRosa, 2014

Winter Beeches
When cold sun sifts down through the understory,
the beech leaves glow, like a brown-winged miller
that hovers round the street lamp and beats the powder
from its wings. This light is the modest glory
of our winter. On work days, when we speed
distracted here and there, we may not notice.
But walk near in the fog, half-past the solstice--
in February, when peepers start to breed:
the glow will draw us through the backlit haze
into an ashen spring. Now I think of this
half light in the August heat, as Joe-pye’s
pink clouds smolder in the ditch and days
are growing shorter; as the lake’s cool mist
clings to the pines and mutes the sun’s slow rise.
     --Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol. VII: North Carolina (Texas A&M Press, 2015); Mouth Work (St Andrews University Press, 2016)

Grass Cracks
​grass cracks
under my boots
tears blow into my eyes

the man
I might have been
dreaming about me--

a vast iron sky
a field of terse stubble
feeding one crow
     Mouth Work (St Andrews University Press, 2016)

​crow in the white oak
eyeing the empty field
as if he owned it
—Inspired by Issa


night rain
a crow caws
from far away


crow caws
shaking the tree
night rain falls again

Posted 2 Feb 2025. Send comments to [email protected]