ALISON GRANUCCI

WINTER ISSUE #11 FEATURED POET

Alison Granucci is a Pushcart-nominated poet and naturalist living in the Hudson Valley. Founder and president emeritus of Blue Flower Arts literary speaker’s agency, her work is published or forthcoming in RHINO, Pangyrus, Terrain.org, Tupelo Quarterly, About Place Journal, Connecticut River Review, Great River Review, Subnivean, EcoTheo Review, Crosswinds, Humana Obscura, The Dewdrop, and an anthology Little by Little, the Bird Builds its Nest. Her essay “Teacher Bird” was a nonfiction finalist in phoebe: a journal of literature and art. Granucci serves as a reader for The Rumpus and is at work on her first collection.

WINTER GARDEN

After autumn’s withering,

nothing

calls me out, just the cold remains

of the departed year.

Fertile ground hard beneath my boots,

once-green ferns lay flat, trapped

in a patch of ice,

earthy mirror to the icy sky—

the winter garden is full of sky.

Every ephemeral furl that bloomed   is gone.

Now even the falling snow is gone

touching the warmth of my upturned hands,

even the surprising rising of that crow leaves

only an afterimage of what I never saw,

even the memory of my mother

can’t be found.

Can beauty absent be beauty still?

Upon all the blues and pinks that died

to stay alive entombed   in root

only the press of earth remains, and

the early setting of the sun.