Star Field

Jill Osier

Folks would talk about it,
and even after I lived
in that mountain town
months, a year, even after
getting close with the girl
from the pharmacy,
guys from the woods, I did
not know.

I waited to somehow divine
what it was. Be invited. Still
I imagine a great expanse,
a meadow, high above the town,
of tiny flowers, like lovers
on their backs, looking up.

Cloud Physics

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

Star Field

More by this poet

Cloud Physics

Blood

Refuge

Poems

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Star Field

More by this poet

Cloud Physics

Blood

Refuge

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