Poems by Ellie Rogers

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Impenetrable

by Ellie Rogers

From Canary Winter 2018-19

Ellie lives a few miles from Bdote, the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers in Mni Sota Makoce, land of the Dakota.

As nights lengthen,
                               caribou hooves harden

to crater tundra
                               and unearth lichen

growing below snow still,
                               stiff like abandoned antlers.

Now, rain on snow on snow
                               traps sustenance under untappable ice.

Their whole range
                               beyond their reach.

Nomads’ midwinter lullaby
                               frantic, stamping reindeer.

Left foot, right foot,
                               the dwindling ribs between

81,000 sets of hoof-prints, empty
                               quotation marks waiting for the right words.

In a photo from Siberia, a circle
                               of caribou collapse into each other,

their bodies like petals of spring
                               sedges unfurling too early,

their fur like tufts of cotton grass.
                               Snowdrifts bury their edges.

Their mouths open as if moss will drop
                               from another realm for them,

or perhaps they were lowing as they froze.
                               Qalipu means snow shoveler in Mi’kmaq.

Their bodies were made for this,
                               not for what we’re making of this earth.




Inversion

by Ellie Rogers

From Canary Winter 2018-19

In kindergarten, we plotted paper lions
and lambs across the month of March.
A parade of fierce, fierce, fierce. A gentle ending.

This February, snowdrops rise
from snowless ground. A blossoming
over starred land. Lenten roses herald

the errant lamb. The buds, young
and impatient – who could blame them? –
plotting lamb, lamb, lamb, bloom.

I almost lie down in greening pastures,
as if swift melt gentling tawny fields
always merits a hallelujah.

As if April. As if an ordered wheel
of constellations across untouchable sky:
Leo then Aries rising. Resurrection of air

warmer than breath. Shutters trying to fly.
At night, wind wraps me in something like a ghost
giving up. I dream of losing my hands.

A false spring. Peach buds trusting melt
now shrouded in morning snow. Crocuses open
and frozen at the foot of our wood pile.




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