If there was ever an appropriate time for a barbaric YAWP....

...it is now.

I just found out that a poem I wrote called "Sugar" has been accepted for publication in Pathways: A Journal of Literature & Art, a smaller publication put out by those fine folks at The Berkshire Writers Room, who publish the annual Berkshire Review.

Sugar

We rise in the bleak half hours

of early March

and cocoon in layers

—Carharts, boots, hats—

thankfully drawn outside into the snow or mud and sugar maples.

We peer into the sky, read the clouds

for signs of snow or rain,

watch for buds in the trees:

their beginning and our sweet end.

Soon the fire crackles in the arch’s warm womb,

its oily black paint bubbling and flaking,

and sweet steam billows up

from the steel streak of the narrow boiling pan.

It won’t be long before we lean into it

for the first whiffs.

All day we feed the flame,

chop and stack wood,

pour clear sap into the golden roil.

Check the galvanized buckets again after the day warms,

peer at the dripping tin tongues with wrinkled foreheads,

and listen for the hollow plunk or splash.

We breathe quick parched prayers

—patience, thanks, strength—

into the wind.

And ladle more sap into the frothy boil.

We stomp cold, sore feet.

We wait, patient.

Even into the starry, howling morning hours,

sticky and smoky,

we wait.

Such slow hours pass in this glad, weary rhythm.

HMMooreNiver