by Carol Alexander

I asked for you and now you are here.

There's enough, a rumble of thunder snow,

along with the burnt toast smell of steam.

The spare room is untidy, like my disbelief.

A trellis, a welter of wrens, hard-shelled beasts

scrambling for succor, whatever can cling.

It isn't perfect here. Pinned by an internal map,

wings flit darkly, stray again, plummet blue.

I'll leave the walls without a tin roof,

let the curious snow infringe a darkening sill.

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Carol Alexander is the author of the poetry collections Environments (Dos Madres Press) and Habitat Lost (Cave Moon Press). Her chapbook Bridal Veil Falls is published by Flutter Press. Alexander's poems appear in a variety of anthologies and journals such as The Common, Cumberland River Review, The Healing Muse, New Verse News, One, Poetrybay, Southern Humanities Review, Rise Up Review, Stonecoast Review and Third Wednesday. New work is forthcoming in 2020 in Aji, Chiron Review, and the The Goose: A Journal of Arts, Environment, and Culture in Canada.