Issue 12 | Winter 2013

First Frost

We stared out the kitchen
windows at the white lawn.

In the garden the sweet basil
I intended to turn into pesto

had turned dark. Tomatoes slumped
over their tall cages, shrunken,

their green reaching done.
By the time I walked into the sharp air

the frost, under the advancing sun,
had withdrawn,

except for that spot under the mulberry tree
that became, on a closer look,

the mockingbird’s ash-gray feathers
left behind by a hawk.

Filed under: Poetry