Martha Silano
Summer Lake, December
When I arrived, I wept for all the shades of brown.
Tawny. Brass. Burnt Sienna. Walnut. Buff.
The ghostly green leaves of the willows.
The black of the pier. The gray-iced pond
with its holes like the mouths of largemouth bass.
Cattail spikes like microphones for the quail.
I couldn’t get enough of the inch or so of frost
on every twig, every blade of golden grass,
of the snow on russet hills. The chocolate mud
I glopped through, ruining my boots. Into it I sank.
Martha Silano reads “Summer Lake, December”
Martha Silano’s most recent book is Gravity Assist (Saturnalia Books, 2019). She also co-authored The Daily Poet: Day-by-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice (Two Sylvias Press, 2013). Recent poems can be found in Cincinnati Review, Image, Salamander, and JuxtaProse. Martha teaches at Bellevue College and Seattle’s Hugo House.