by Laura A. Ring
I was reckless as a child.
No sky too wide. Traipsed
along the ridgeline in full sun.
Deer trails. Clearings.
Never shied
from wing or foot fall.
I lingered
at the fox’s musk-red burrow.
The horned owl’s roost.
I wanted to be seen.
To be someone’s
desperate luck.
To see the world
through tender feathers
I collected in my travels.
Black of corvid.
Gray of goshawk.
I was a trial to my mother,
who knew what I did not.
I was innocent of claw.
I have come
reluctant
to my prudence.
This coat of winter white.
My feet a furred hush.
I understand
the way of night.
What it is to hide. To run.
But sometimes
I still stand.
Like the farm girls
on the roadside
with their thumbs out.
I make the ground
rumble.
I make the Gods
attend.
::
Laura A. Ring is the author of Field Notes Recovered from the Expedition to Devil’s Peak (MWC Press), winner of the 2020 Foster-Stahl chapbook competition. Her poems have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Trampset, RHINO, Stirring, and elsewhere. Born in Vermont, she lives in Chicago.
Image: Chris Bird
ID: White hare in the snow.
Psaltery & Lyre 