End of January

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

 
Don’t leave me January
In your deep I want to sleep
In your pale days I want to go on idle
 
In silent bursts of beauty
Snow-laced twig
Starry night
 
Let me cling to your forbidding cold
And your incubating dark
A little longer


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Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and award-winning author of seven nature books, including City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island and The Joy of Forest Bathing. She began writing poetry during the pandemic and had the good fortune to discover Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice. The site has featured several of her poems during the past year, including “How to Silence a Woman,” and “If I have loved you,” both of which won Moon Prizes. Melanie grew up in Vermont wandering the woods and fields and has never stopped wandering.