Surviving

There’s a fog outside.
Thickness in the air.
It’s three in the afternoon. Not yet dark
but you feel dusk is near.

What’s left of the snow is heavy.
Almost water, but not. White; still holding form,
it slides from roofs in slabs; edge-curling sheaths.
Drips from edges into gutters onto valleys where roofs meet.

Beneath the weighty evaporating blanket of white:
mud. Brown grasses. Old leaves.
Waiting to be washed away by Spring rains—
still a few months off—that will beckon

the green we all await. Winter was hard.
Cold hearts;
blind eyes;
wrong directions;

erosion of foundations. We all need to rebuild;
restructure. Mend and improve.
The process must be inclusive; respectful; dedicated.
Our garden must be planted with

seeds of strength and beauty
the likes of which have not yet shown their face
to the sky. It is our job to nurture this. To
guide, protect, cajole it forth.

Our garden.
Our future.
Our legacy.
Survival.

By Marjorie Moorhead

Biography:

Marjorie Moorhead writes from the NH/VT border, where she tries for a daily reverent walk. Her poetry is in three anthologies. A chapbook, Survival: Trees, Tides, Song, will be out in May 2019 from Finishing Line Press. Her poem “Taking a Knee” will appear in The Poetry Box’s Poeming Pigeon this Spring. Marjorie has many poems at sites from Indolent Books (What Rough Beast; HIV Here & Now), Rising Phoenix Review, Sheila-Na-Gig Online.