Diane Vogel Ferri’s full-length poetry book is Everything is Rising (Luchador Press). Her latest novel is No Life But This: A Novel of Emily Warren Roebling (Atbosh Media) Her essays have been published in The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Scene Magazine, and Yellow Arrow Journal, among others. Her poems can be found in numerous journals such as Wend Poetry, Blue Heron Review, Rubbertop Review, and Poet Lore. Her previous publications are Liquid Rubies (poetry), The Volume of Our Incongruity (poetry), and The Desire Path (novel). She has done many poetry readings locally. Diane’s essay, “I Will Sing for You” was featured at the Cleveland Humanities Festival in 2018. A former teacher, she holds an M.Ed from Cleveland State University and is a founding member of Literary Cleveland. Her poem, For You, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of The Net 2023

Friday, January 15, 2010

Winter

Slash of scarlet
bird in a mass of gray twigs
deer, like tree stumps blend
at rest on a cold cotton mattress
bough to toothpick painted
to the edge white to the tip
heavy laden and bowing to their Maker

a robin living on the piece of
startling green by the septic tank
picnic tables smothered and flying creatures
clutter and waltz at the feeders
sunless months our skin
as sallow as the sky
quiescent neighborhoods hibernate
in primitive search of warmth

on the silent journey
flakes continue like fairies lacking restraint
in a freefall to earth
circling down slower than gravity allows
and sometimes a tuft is released
from a branch carried by the cold
across our path in the unchanging
quarter pattern of the Ohio winter

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I inclination not concur on it. I assume polite post. Expressly the designation attracted me to read the intact story.

Kat Mortensen said...

You paint a wonderful picture with this, Diane. I liked this very much - especially the first stanza.

Ruth Hull Chatlien said...

Beautifully evocative. I loved the line "our skin as sallow as the sky"