Envy
Early this morning, mid December,
when all the pre-dawn creatures
hunt and cry and patter their delicate feet
in snow and every breathing thing
leaves ghosts behind them in the air,
I heard an owl outside the kitchen window,
winged and cloaked in velvety dark
while I sat dumbly at my desk to write.
All day a small grief has not ceased
to chafe my heart.
Sunni Brown Wilkinson’s poetry can be found in Western Humanities Review, New Ohio Review, Sugar House Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, SWWIM, The Maynard, Ruminate and other journals and anthologies. She is the author of The Marriage of the Moon and the Field (Black Lawrence Press) and The Ache & The Wing (winner of the 2020 Sundress Chapbook contest). She also won New Ohio Review’s NORward Poetry Prize and the 2020 Joy Harjo Prize from Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts. She teaches at Weber State University and lives in northern Utah with her husband and three sons.