Midwinter

White oaks bare, the light gone steel gray,         
the creek becomes its rocks. Another year flattened     

into film grain; the past a jet lag, jetway. When I look back    
do I mean relentlessness or restlessness? Hiking

counts as writing enough these days. The world says  
a woman is a backup plan, a mother is a panic sponge;

by winter, I’m a better ghost, but I keep going
up the mountain out of habit, count birds, count planes,        

box-breathe to calm my nervous system down.
What wouldn’t a body try against hopelessness?         

I do this every year—forget
winter’s a kind of echo song. The self calls and responds

one side/another                 swirl  
round/round                        cave.  

Above the valley, nuthatches dart in and out of limestone
crevices, clatter-wing for warmth. Look at their silhouettes

against the freezing fog & tell me even this
is only temporary.

Hiking Moraine State Park

I keep seeing dragonflies I don’t know the names for: shimmers
over the marsh. Based on location, iNaturalist suggests

they might have been autumn meadowhawks or eastern amberwings
or shadow darners. The internet doesn’t say what do you know

about anything, but it makes the point anyway. I’m trying
to pay better attention. My entire adult life, I’ve felt

whatever this is, it can’t last. Lately I fall asleep naming
the birds & trees as if my gratitude might keep them safe, pinned

to the Earth. Maybe I do, maybe I don’t believe that.
The wind’s a hem dragging across a hardwood floor & still, I want

the words & names & so…To help me identify the world
the AI would like access to my eyes, which is to say, my phone’s

camera. What does an algorithm love if not a cascade
of data & yet no search yields the common name for blur.

The Poet Considers a Starling

star-speckled fever;
restless, reckless thing;
nest-unsettled pirate.

why the sky exists, insists,
offers whatever bird-brained wish
flight is.

feathered cacophony;
spring-recurrent spirit dream;
optimistic kamikaze.

Violeta Garcia-Mendoza is a Spanish-American poet, teacher, and photographer. She is the author of Songs for the Land-Bound (forthcoming, June Road Press, 2024) and her poetry has appeared widely and been nominated multiple times for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. In 2022, she was awarded a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation. Violeta lives with her family in western Pennsylvania, where she is part of the Madwomen in the Attic Writing Workshops at Carlow University.

Published April 15 2024