The Time White Lightning Busted Out
by Cynthia Hughes
Inside our guts a jitter.
Inside the jitter a ribbon
the color of a January morning
curling past the wood box
and through the shed door,
to the packed dirt floor,
the rusted-out hinge.
Inside a velvet black
the empty water bowl
and inside that lack
a lost pony in a blizzard,
out on the hill or down
a two track to the river
winding along our worry,
the frozen car battery,
‘til finally our tires
slip the slant road
to the high pasture.
We scour the storm –
ice crystals hurtled
through the eye of a needle,
threading our hearts
with gleanings of tracks
beside the snow fence.
And inside those tracks
recognition, a small hope.
Cynthia Hughes writes poetry and music from her home in Southern Vermont, where she is a primary school librarian and teacher. Her poems have been published in several literary journals in the U.S. and have received recognition from poetry awards in the U.S., Ireland and Canada. She is working on her MFA and a first collection of poems.