Doug Ramspeck

Winter Harvest

These are mad dreams. They have
undressed themselves to empty limbs. 

They have flown away. I know this
because I wake nights to hear them 

skittering off. These are our dispensations:
bare feet on cold floors, bitterness 

seeping through window jambs.
I dream sometimes that my mother 

stands again in winter snow.
Her nightgown billows. Her thoughts 

billow. Or she engages us in a series
of slow retreats. Look at how quietly 

she steps away, vanishing. The dirt
in the field is attempting to harden 

where she was into stone. It wants
to be permanence, forgotten. 

We shouldn’t underestimate the lure:
to blink and for there to be nothing 

left but snow. I remember seeing blood
drops with her once in a snowstorm, 

blood drops atop the snow by the river.
We bent down together. We studied 

how red could be a song. And the sky
above us was another winter field.

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Doug Ramspeck is the author of ten poetry collections, two collections of short stories and a novella. His most recent book, Smoke Memories, received the Lena Shull Book Award. Individual poems have appeared in journals that include The Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Slate, The Sun and The Georgia Review.