"Field to Field" by Miriam Entin-Bell (she/her)

Yesterday as I was sleeping

I asked, perhaps silently,

perhaps without even knowing it,

for snow.

I asked for a blizzard.

Dreaming a fox or another

creature with paws for digging this den

with the copper tub in the center I climb into the well

and bubbling up from the bottom it comes,

When you walk field to field at dusk the wind, the blue dark, the storm

buries your foot prints yet you turn back oriented

knowing what you walked through and why you came

I heard that sound like snowmelt falling from high branches-

I woke suddenly and with wonder.

This morning my laundry

is out of the dryer and all over my bed.

I leave to make tea

and when I come back she is lying in it as a cat,

as any smart person or animal in the snow knows to do.

The sight of her there and I know

what I asked for.