It's almost spring, but cold. This morning
I slipped on ice crossing the bridge over the slough-
for the first time in months I hadn't reached for
the railing. The days grow longer, lighter. I walk
down to the mailbox at 5:30 and five deer are grazing
near the neighbor's fenced garden, some yearlings
among them. They look up and drift farther down
the hill, but the fifth approaches, stops and watches
until I open, then close, the mailbox and walk back up
the road. When I turn back to look, the doe is still
watching. Along the road, where once I planted irises
in too little sun, the hellebore are blooming and
the scent of daphne precedes its bloom. Yesterday,
Bill mentioned an essay he'd read about the life one
didn't live but is aware of having missed. I don't think
much about the life I might have had, but remember
the short film we watched about Sicilian miners descending
two by two deep into the earth each day, then, shirtless,
walking through a warren of barely lit paths to drill
and chip sulfur from the cave walls while above them
the life of the village, men in fields, women doing laundry,
a donkey waiting with its cart, goes on without them.
Late Winter by Maxine Scates | Sandalwood Poetry Reed Diffuser Set
$15.00Price
Maxine Scates’ most recent book, My Wilderness, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2021. She is the author of three previous collections of poetry: Undone (New Issues), Black Loam (Cherry Grove) and Toluca Street (University of Pittsburgh Press). Her poems have been widely published in such journals as The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, Ironwood, The New England Review, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Poetry and The Virginia Quarterly Review and have received, among other awards, the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, the Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry (Oregon Book Award) and two Pushcart Prizes. She lives in Eugene, Oregon.
