Some quiet time is needed

I feel a need to withdraw officially from this space until next week. I've been grappling with grief these last few days, and some personal issues. My friend's son died unexpectedly on Monday; he would have been 21 in mid March. I've been holding my children a little more closely, and relishing their weight in my lap. I find myself silently reciting lines to a poem I wrote nearly twenty years ago.... probably about the time this young man was a toddler.

Winter's Women

It is the howling

of wolves, surrounded

by peaks of snow-packed

longing. Their necks extend

heads back, ears flattened.

They stand solid, shamelessly

each mouth wide, jaws

relinquishing the call that is

frosted hot and deep

like the wind.

I have seen these wolves

in women whose grief

demands release from the

muscles of their abdomens.

They toss back their heads,

eyes closed and twisted into

red grooves, as the sound rises

from esophagus to tongue, out

into the wind. It is a harsh wind

which soothes the scorching

phlegm of each wolf's agony,

and the women know it.