Poem: "Thaw" by Pamela Harrison

Thaw

On a March Monday so mild
    the season’s song birds sing,
she puts on her galoshes and passes down
    on old crusted snow to the hollow.

Leaving the path, the sun-bathed bowl
    of meadow and the noisy road
where trucks and cars rush past,
    she steps into the stand of pines

like the deer that sleeps beneath its boughs.
    Standing still in the quiet cover,
awakening to the grove’s hidden life,
    she soon hears the invisible stream.

Threading toward it through the thawing,
    slipping, catching a bare branch,
she follows the sound down to a pool
    where silver trickles over ice. There,

she lies down on a bed of fallen needles
    and gazes up though the intricate
etchings of bare limbs toward the green-
    needled height. She thinks

maybe she’ll make a little room there
    above the rusted floor, clearing
some space, simplified and chaste.
    For now, it’s enough to rest a while
​
near the whispering, hearing again
    the world’s pulse freed from loss.

LISTEN
Pamela Harrison reads "Thaw"