Poems by Ellie Rogers
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Impenetrable
by Ellie Rogers
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.
© Ellie Rogers
Inversion
by Ellie Rogers
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.
© Ellie Rogers