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.