The Snow (Stands to My Waist), (Like) Me (Falls Still)

Jill Osier

Winter, friend, I get it. We are having a long talk
and have just gotten into the thick of it.

Days ago the signs were there.
I was the only thing dark and moving

through the white woods, and my leg kept leaving me
small grey commas of ice seen coming back.

This is a very long talk we’ve been having. My body already knew
and began to make an important list.

So it is quite different, then, if in a mountain town
the mountains are close, rather than far. Here

they are far, their distance away established,
consistent year to year, like a parent’s

or sibling’s. They have their own music.
So I confess I do not know what it’s like,

Jill Osier

2019

Blood

Soon the time when just roads and rivers

run dark in the white. Then they’ll be gone.

But during such days of path and vein

you’ll trace back how things became.

You’re standing in a curving lane of birches

with the word confidante. The birches

are hilled, coming toward you, going away,

and it’s with you, this word, the same as light

coming bright off the snow, or light being held

as blue shadow.

Jill Osier

2018

Refuge

I’ll tell you this: I am the only part of winter left.

It beckoned and I followed, past all reason,

followed it like the end of a broken train

through white woods, and I stayed, with simple tools,

set on trying to construct more of a season. It has taken

all of me to do it, and you would not believe the storms.

You would not believe how I sleep. From here anything

would sound like a cry. Everything looks like pieces of God.

Jill Osier

2018

Poems