Hard Beauty
In ‘Wintering’, poet Ashley-Elizabeth Best reminds us that even in the season of darkest days, the light will find a way.
Enjoy ‘Wintering’, excerpted here in its entirety, from Issue 9, Winter 2016, on sale until April 30th.
Wintering
How these days make
a spiralled collapse into
clumped orbits of snow banks.
At our cabin on the edge
of Algonquin park, wolves roam
under the skeletal canopy,
dark under the winter sun’s
excessive light.
In the luminary tide
we are the lusters of hard beauty
startled by the evening grosbeak
landing in the hearts of giant
coniferous carcasses, triggering
rippled waves of snow.
The winter sun enlarges the dark
comedy of life, the overwhelming
presence of tree spines, their whole
being laid bare beside full skirted black spruce.
The wood inhabitants strung out and hungry
wander watchful as the light descends above
spiked bodies.
Want more free poetry? Read ‘griefbody’ by Cara Waterfall, from Issue 36, and ‘Birdhouse’ by David Clink, from Issue 14.
And for more from Issue 9, pick up your copy today, ON SALE now until the end of April!
Ashley-Elizabeth Best is a disabled poet and essayist from Kingston, Ontario. Her work appears in New Welsh Review, CV2, Ambit Magazine, The Literary Review of Canada, and Glasgow Review of Books, among others. In 2015 she was a finalist for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and her debut collection of poetry, Slow States of Collapse, was published with ECW Press. Best’s chapbook Alignment was published with Rahila’s Ghost Press in spring 2021. Visit her on Twitter.
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