I-89 FROM VERMONT TO CANADA IN WINTER

by Tricia Knoll

The Canadian border is less than an hour north.
Our countries have history. Good neighbors, 
borrow and offer. Fight side by side. 
I get my power through Hydro-Quebec.
Canadians come to shop, ski, hike
icefish, and mountain bike. I drive north
for museums and botanical gardens. Maple sap
runs both ways. Sugar shacks boil
here and there. I love the maple leaf flag 
as much as the blue and yellow of Ukraine. 
We share shock and a blood moon.
So close now
 
to winter’s big thaw. My eyes downcast. 
As if every winter pothole 
might eat me, vomit me out. 
Black slush banks the highway, 
a salt road gleams white. 
Once fleeing to Canada seemed
like an escape-hatch. Love
your neighbor. Don’t beggar them.
Will Canadians forgive? 
The border is less than an hour away.
We are so very close. 

Tricia Knoll lives in Vermont near the Canadian border. Her 2024 collection Wild Apples documents her downsizing and move seven years ago from Oregon to Vermont. The taste of maple is sweet; the anger of neighbors is not.

A MOTHER FLEES

by Jack Kristiansen

            after Marc Chagall’s Fire in the Snow (1942) 

"Fire in the Snow" (1942); Gouache on paper by Marc Chagall. Collection: Amy and Eric Huck, Lewisberry, Pennsylvania

 

It’s human  

to start fires 

and every so often 

people approve   

of villages going up 

in flame 

so tonight 

a mother flees. 

 

Like a statue 

that’s come alive 

just in time  

to jump down 

from her perch 

above the altar, 

a mother flees. 

 

Having awoke 

to the coughing 

of her child, 

their house flickering, 

a mother flees. 

 

No crown 

on her head 

to hold in place 

her flaring hair, 

a mother flees. 

 

The night’s gone green, 

the snow green, 

her clothes smoky green. 

Her calm dog 

waiting for her 

to catch up, 

a mother flees. 

             

No husband 

in sight, 

the angels gone 

in disbelief, 

left with a son 

to save, 

a mother flees. 

 

Her child 

too heavy  

to carry far, 

a mother flees. 

Jack Kristiansen exists in the notebooks and computer files of William Aarnes who hopes to move soon from South Carolina to Manhattan.  His new collection The Hum in Human is available from Main Street Rag.

THE WRECKED SEASON

by George Held

Florence left a trail of flooded roads, broken trees and downed power lines across Leland, N.C. (Ken Blevins/The Star-News via AP via The Washington Post)

              As I walked down to Rotten Lake I remembered
              the wrecked season, haunted by plans of salvage…
                             —Muriel Rukeyser, “First Elegy. Rotten Lake”


Snow & cold in the Northeast
Show your breath on May Day;
This spring will be short –
A wrecked season.

Every rare warm day overwelcomed
As halcyon, a resurrection,
Citizens worshiping the sun
Bare legs & shoulders to welcome warmth.

No one mentions the global warming
Behind each wrecked season,
& few foresee the advent
Of a wrecked planet,

Its seawalls overtopped, lowlands swamped,
Sea wrack & sea foam decorating
Flooded floors & warped siding,
A civilization sliding by on mud.

Cry, the beloved Earth
& cry, the drenched citizens;
Leave your belongings behind:
Flee upland or drown.

George Held, a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News, writes from New York. His twentieth collection is Dog Hill Poems (Seattle, 2017). Under the Escalator, his dark fantasy for children, will be released later this month.