This Season
A stone kicks up as I walk, lands as a heart.
I turn on a trail that cuts into woods
looking for quiet, the quiet of wandering
a path packed by deer hooves.
Pushing through brush I find myself
back at the road and recognize
my hope. This is the season bluebirds
flock in the village, chipping at feeders,
twitching in shrubs, flicking over the iron fence
of the cemetery across from the hayfield.
Yesterday eight perched on the edge
of the barn roof gutter, plump
and rust-breasted, backs and wings a sky
any of us would be happy to wear.
*
Birthday
Juvenile hawks scream
overhead, complain at not being fed
now that they’ve fledged.
I don’t want to feed anyone
since my mother gave up.
She stopped eating after her final
birthday when I made her
blueberry pancakes for dinner.
She said it was all she wanted.
I used her mother’s recipe
the pancakes golden domes in the pan
sweet and soft
in my mouth and hers. I knew
she was no longer hungry but was happy
to ask for something I could make.
*
Grace Mattern’s poetry and prose has been published widely, including in The Sun, Calyx, Prairie Schooner, and Poet Lore. She received fellowships from the New Hampshire State Arts Council and Vermont Studio Center. Her book “The Truth About Death” won the NH Readers’ Choice Award for Outstanding Work of Poetry.
