Nellie Hill



THE HUNT     

We comb the grasses,
those long summer grasses
long after summer has passed.
We stride over the fields
and along the riverbeds,
past the hickory trees
with their dried hickory smell,
and the low-growing yellow oaks
with their oakey leaves still fluttering.
Our boots and our gloves release
a leathery fullness, a leathery animal smell,
in the stilled days of late autumn, the stillness
of early winter.  We pass the remaining birds
with their miserable bird cheeps,
exactly the crackling sound of the thin ice
that covers the grasses before sunrise. 

And we take home this feeling
of the wildness between seasons
as if we've forgotten where we came from.
We walk into the sleepiness that comes with cold
and the quiet before and after.



THE VIEW IN WINTER

The first time I see the summer house in snow
it's smothered, not breathing,
and inside the floor glares in the cold
and there's nothing in the cupboards,
not even rum or Scotch,
nothing to bring blood to the hands.

A musk smell hangs like a curtain
between then and before, then and now.
How can I move my numbed feet
from frozen memory and go
down the hill to the lake, rigid
in its winter sleep where I want to walk
the surface of this world
because the ice and the blanketing snow
have nothing to stop me,
nothing to call me back
the way in those summers
the dark water called, fragrant,
musical within the summer winds. 

What do I want with this ramshackle house
back of the little road I know so well?
Whether in summer's damp arms
or winter's heavy coat, why have I returned
among spiders and squirrel nests and the bold mice
who've taken the house for themselves
but to remember life at its source,
where one begins to store
the days for the long view back.





Nellie Hill's work has appeared in various journals including Poetry East, American Poetry Review (with an introduction of her by Denise Levertov), The Harvard Magazine, Commonweal, The Alaska Quarterly Review, and The Snowy Egret, as well as in three chapbooks.  For several years she taught creative writing  in the Joint Medical and Humanities Program at UC Berkeley and now has a private acupressure practice in Berkeley.









                                    

 

Home
Current Issue
Submissions
Contributors' Notes


Email this poem Printer friendly page

A CLOSER LOOK: Eric Pankey

Franz Baskett

Kate Bernadette Benedict

Bruce Bennett

Ben Berman

George Bishop

Sheila Black

Ronda Broatch

Jeremy Byars

Ann Cale

Roxana Cazan

Norma Chapman

Nancy Kenney Connolly

Barbara Crooker

Michael C. Davis

Sarah DeCorla-Souza

Roberta Feins

Nan Fry

Martin Galvin

Vanessa Gebbie

Brian Gilmore

Howard Good

John Grey

Brenda Mann Hammack

Colleen S. Harris

Joy Helsing

Nellie Hill

Melanie Houle

Michael Hutchison

Jason Irwin

Lisa Kosow

Frederick Lord

Dan Masterson

William McCue

Claire McGoff

John Milbury-Steen

Anna Mills

Roger Mitchell

Barbara J. Orton

Richard Peabody

Steven Pelcman

Patric Pepper

Allan Peterson

Gretchen Primack

Oliver Rice

Margaret A. Robinson

Janice D. Soderling

John Solensten

Joseph Somoza

Sandra Staas

Micah Stack

Susan Stiles

Jennifer Sullivan

Colette Thomas

Barbara M. White

Kathi Wolfe

Ernie Wormwood

More

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

 

 

 

 

 


Last Updated: Feb 22, 2020 - 12:30:13 PM

Copyright 2005 - 2020 Cook Communication.