Maggie Hess was raised on a tobacco farm with a barn, a creek, and a beautiful view in Southwest Virginia until the age of four when she moved in to her family’s urban homestead in Bristol, Tennessee. Her poems have appeared in 20 publications ranging from Tule to Blue Fifth to Skyhorse. Maggie won the Leidig Poetry Award and the May B. Smith writing award and has self-published numerous chapbooks.

This poem is concurrently published in Torrid Literature Journal.

Heron Taking Off

Alone on a road in winter.
Shoes over gravel.
Dogs on the trail of something.

Singing to the woods thanks.
Listen to the reply of eternal impermanence.
White water cascading over growing rocks.

Lichen takes the tree.
The tree takes lichen.
Great blue without trying lands again in a poem.

Moss is budding in the leaf litter.
Christmas ferns and maiden hair ferns spring up.
Tan beech leaves still cling to their branches.

Since last week the trees shuffled.
Broken trunk wading in the water.
Two does dashing across the road.

Thirty degrees over normal this winter.
Earth with a fever.
Who can heal it?

Me a believer in small things.
Power in words that find me.
Launching landing, hoping for Her health.