It’s as if

by Brooke Herter James


Under the full worm moon of March
the meadow mice scamper
across a field of light,
the ewe leans her wooly chin
on the split rail fence,
the pig ambles out of doors
on her cloven hooves,
the donkey refuses
to lay down in the hay
and I, in my bare feet,
stand in the doorway
of soft midnight,
in a moment that opens
wide like a prayer
under the first full moon of March —
it’s as if we can hear the sap rise.


* * * * *

Brooke Herter James is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The Widest  Eye (2016) and Spring took the Long Way Around (2019), one prose poetry/photography collection, Postcards from Montana (2020) and one children’s book, Why Did the Farmer Cross the Road? (2017). Her poems have appeared in Mountain Troubadour Poetry Journal, Tulip Tree Review, Orbis and Rattle, as well as the online publications Poets Reading the News, New Verse News, Flapper Press, Typishly and Writing in a Woman’s Voice. She lives on small farm in Vermont.