December 2015

To love a salt marsh in winter

by Dawn Paul

To love a salt marsh in winter

is to love the color brown

crumbling storm-ravaged creek banks

slick frozen mudflats

weathered rushes and reeds.

To love a salt marsh in winter

is to love the sound

of tide-jumbled ice chunks

in flooded creeks

surf thrashing the beach

beyond the huddled dunes.

To love a salt marsh in winter,

face the wind

watch the horizon long and low

as one lone harrier drops down

from the empty sky.

Dawn Paul teaches writing and interdisciplinary studies at Montserrat College of Art and has published two novels, The Country of Loneliness and Still River. Her poetry has been published most recently in the Naugatuck River Review and the Paterson Literary Review. She is also a frequent performer on the Improbable Places Poetry Tour and works with the Mass Poetry Festival.