Homestead in Dakota Territory
Wintering
Dakota Territory, 1884
Already, winter makes a corpse of things.
Snow reshapes what ice has taken. You’ve lost
interest in letters. So let sunrise come.
Let smoke grow darker by the light of day—
what I could spare of you I’ve burned already.
The fencepost needs repair. Let sunrise come.
Let panels of light make thirsty the ice-
caked stump of oak. Let the sky go empty
as December’s intimations, when in snow
we fashioned ourselves side by side as fallen
angels: yours, the greater wingspan; my outline
barely reaching. Daybreak. I lay my body down
in powder. Roots torque up through the chest’s
blankness, snarl of knots unloosed. What comes,
on parting you insisted, will come. Ice splits,
in the distance. What breaks will break. Let it.
–Shara Lessley
We all have ambient narratives in us, those story lines that speak in particular to us. This poem draws on a very powerful narrative thread in me that has been present in my life for as long as I can remember. Maybe having pioneer progenitors leaves an imprint in that supra-DNA sense.
Lessley came to my attention by way of her entertaining re-evaluation essay about Milton on Rumpus. If you are a Milton fan, take a peek at this.
Shara Lessley is the recipient of the Stegner, O’Connor, Tickner and Diane Middlebrook poetry fellowships, the “Discovery”/The Nation prize and a John Ciardi scholarship from Bread Loaf. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, The Cincinnati Review, Black Warrior Review, and Fence, among others.
Shit I love this.
VV, that’s worth a million to me.
P.s. Winter and I can’t stop talking about this one.
Two of my most respected poetry sources, you and Winter.
That was amazing–thank you!! First the photo caught my eye–my grandpa was born in one in the Dakota’s (now in a Colorado historical collection) and then, the whole tenor of the words, feelings, ahhhhh…..
Karen, so it sounds like you share this narrative as well…