A walk in the woods is not the same
as a walk in the park, of this much I am certain.
Rounded with snow, jagged boulders are lush,
yet the air so brittle, the most secret rustle
is a gunshot. Tree limbs droop, sometimes snap—
this I know of ice. I walk alone along the deer path
and the sounds of heavy wet snow falling
from the branches are steady, and I keep turning,
turning, expecting faces, seeing nothing
but branches spring away. You are never alone
in the woods, in the winter, in the dark.
Sanda Moore Coleman has been a working writer and editor for more than 25 years. In 2011, Joan Silber selected her work for the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange prize in fiction from Poets & Writers magazine. More recently, her poems have appeared in Midwestern Gothic and Three Drops from a Cauldron, and are forthcoming in Alternating Current. Presently she is the theatre commentator for her local public radio station, and is the founder and director of a young playwrights festival, which features original work from local high school students.
Lonesome October Lit 