Another April | Katherine Kubarski
Today I end the long cocoon-ment, drop the burlap
itch and scratch for a pink puffer jacket.
Remember how pretty feels.
Novel to be with a man I hardly know, to walk on April snow
just inches above the hard ground, talk nothing deeper
than winter’s last covering.
Landscapes in scattered, snow dusted stones. Elk antler scrapes on
aspen bark. Grouse tracks arrowing into the woods. A tumbled rock
neatly snailed in a jelly roll of snow.
Like a wild animal, I feel his approach, tense as he hugs me from the side. Still
my body draws toward warmth, forgotten yet familiar
beneath layers of feathers, fleece and flannel.
Unwrapping my strange shyness, I bare my face, to be touched again
by breeze, by breath. With curious eyes, he surveys my pale, weary terrain
but says next to nothing, only “It’s all right.”
About the Author:
Katherine Kubarski has been working her magic as a grant proposal writer for over three decades. A Relax & Write retreat on the sacred island of Molokai coaxed her into creative writing, something she had long wanted to do. Her work has appeared in Mountain Gazette, Santa Fe Literary Review, Santa Fe Reporter (awarded first prize in the 2019 Poetry Contest), and Snow Poems Project. In search of post-pandemic inspiration, she is headed with her laptop to a cabin in the forest of Chilean Patagonia where the world’s tiniest deer and other surprises await her.