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At the Edge of Winter
- Wesleyan University Press
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AT THE E D G E OF W I N T E R Vacant cornstalks rattle in the field; the ditches are clogged with wet leaves. Under the balding maple, toadstools cluster like villages; their ruffled undersides are brown. Inside, we preparefor children: the clean linens, the perfumed loins, the aphrodisiac are ready. The cat, our pagan daughter, has brought her offering—the half-eaten, headless carcass of a rabbit; its bright guts bloom on the back porch step. Rich November! Under the stiff brown grass, the earth's maw is full of tulip bulbs, hyacinth and crocus to mull and ripen these long months in deep freeze. This is our season of opulence. Festive, extravagant, we'll spend your creamy seed like the feathered milkweed blowing open. Smeared with rabbit blood like a pagan, I hack down the last new shoots of the rosebush and arrange a bed of rose and red cedar to scent the fertile wound of the rabbit, lying open and ready, primed for the winding sheet of snow and the restless track of the gray creative worm. 12 ...