Midwinter
BY RICHIE HOFMANN
for Emily
Wearing Wellington boots, we followed the retriever
along the perimeter of the property.
Just that morning a man and his son
had brought in firewood from the fallen tree.
Through barberry: a small clearing
in the woods, hollow like the inside of a cello.
I walked around a tree stump, like Mustardseed.
After sunset, we looked through a square window
into the stark cabin where she writes.
Within a bubble in the antique glass, the sky swirled—
reflected like a sequin, like summer even,
though it was New Years Day, and the world
was dusky, and the dog, the house, the woods, the books—
they weren’t even ours.
