BY MAUREEN THORSON

February, Maine

Trying to rise
from the unleafed thicket of my body,
I only get so far.

It’s okay, I tell myself,
to feel slow and lightless.
Take your cue
from the sap dammed
in this mapled acreage.

It’s not going anywhere
because it isn’t time.
The sun hasn’t surprised
bare branches
with a sense of looseness yet, started
the thaw-and-freeze beat
that clears spring’s throat.

Meanwhile, the snow-glazed trees
only look like microphones
switched to off,
waiting backstage
in the dark for some juice.

They’ve got the juice already.
It’s just that they love the suspense.

Think of that,
I think, flexing
my ankles and wrists
in tiny circles
beneath my leaden comforter.
Think of how the sugar
builds beneath the bark
in gulping, golden gallon-fuls.

Think of yourself like that,
a river rising under the ice,
soon to crank into spillover.
Think how your gorgeousness
will burst singing from the tap.

The Sides

On the path through the meadow, a pile
of what looks like an old explosion
of milkweed seeds. Up close, I find
it’s feathers—downy, curly, gray.
Feathers and a bloody, yellow foot.
This prey, probably a junco. The predator,
probably a hawk. Here’s where I think
the camera should pull back
into the clouds, the meadow
getting smaller as I’m hurried up
into the heavens by an angel
for a luminous appointment
that will explain this small death
or at least let me know whose side
to be on. Watching the cold world disappear,
dizzy from speed and lack of air,
I grasp at the angel’s wings,
come away with a fist full of down.

Maureen Thorson is the author of two collections of poetry, My Resignation (Shearsman Books 2014) and Applies to Oranges (Ugly Duckling Press 2011). A book of lyric essays, On Dreams, is forthcoming from Bloof Books in 2020. She lives in Falmouth, Maine.