Poems for the Turning Year: Seasonal Therian and Otherkin Poetry

Late Snow

Isolde Fernhallow

The snow has gone to crust. It holds my weight
for three steps, then forgets, and I stand in it
up to the shin and listen to the wood
let go of water, one branch at a time.

February is a lean month for a lynx.
I eat standing at the counter, looking out.
A hare's track crosses the lawn and doubles back,
and I am glad for her, and a little not.

Nobody needs me, which is how I like it.
The light comes back a minute every day.
Last thing at night I go out and look up into the larch
for nothing in particular. I always look.

Thaw Walk

Osric Dunmere

March, and the lane is running brown with melt.
I go out anyway. I always go out.
A fox has been along the ditch at dawn
and left his sharp opinion on a stone.

Somewhere far north the wolves are choosing dens,
a bank above the water, dry and deep,
the mother in and out and in again.
I think of them the way you think of cousins.

At home they are all still asleep upstairs,
my wife, and the old dog across the landing.
I come in muddy to the knee, and stand
and count their breathing, and I am content.

Fledging

Hollis Elderbank

In May the poplar ravens bring them out:
four young ones on the goalposts, loud and scruffy,
pink at the corners of the beak, too big
for their own feathers, scolding the tired parents.

The class is meant to be on photosynthesis.
Instead we watch a young one try the wind
and lose it, and slide sideways, and recover,
and land in the long-jump sand as if he meant to.

I do not tell them why I watch so hard.
I tell them every leaf is a patient kitchen.
The window is open. Somebody's worksheet flies.
Something between my shoulders lifts, and holds.

The Shortest Night

Marit Hollowell

Half past four, and already the canal
has its light back, flat and pewter-colored.
I have come down before the town is up
to stand where I always stand, and not be asked.

A coot is fussing somewhere in the reeds.
The lilies have not opened. Nor have I.
My feet are cold in my good shoes. I shift
onto the left, and the right forgets itself.

On Thursday the choir will sing the long summer hymn,
and I will hold the low note, as I do,
and think, while the others breathe, of this gray hour
when nothing moved but light, and I did not.

Dog Days

Tamsin Greywillow

August lies on the house like a big warm dog.
I lie on the kitchen tiles, the coolest place,
and no one asks me why, because they know me,
and they step over me on their way to the fridge.

The wasps have found the plums. The grass is straw.
At six the shadow of the fence comes over
and I move into it the way you move
toward someone at a party you are glad to see.

Then someone says "walk," not even to me,
only in passing, something about the evening,
and the tail I do not have sweeps the tiles clean,
and I am up, and at the door, and it is cooler.

The Roaring

Elspeth Bramblecote

The stags have started on the hill above the dam.
I hear them from the van with the window down,
that long sound like a door dragged over stone,
again, again, from somewhere in the mist.

It is not for me. I am a hind, and forty-eight,
and have a clipboard, and my tea gone cold.
But something in me lifts its head and turns
and goes quite still, to know where everyone is.

The bracken has gone the color of old pennies.
Down at the water's edge the hinds are grazing
as if nobody were shouting, which is wise.
I write the gauge down. Then I stay a while.

First Frost, Recorded

Corbin Ashlark

November the ninth. First frost. Six in the morning.
The car roof white, the lawn gone stiff and gray,
the last rose on the trellis glazed like sugar.
Wind none. Sky clear. I put it in the book.

The swifts left in August; I wrote that down.
The geese came over Tuesday, going south,
and I stood under them with my head tipped back
and ears that are not there turned up to follow.

I have not written what animal hears like this.
The book is not for that. It only says:
Clear. Cold. A blackbird in the hedge, alarm call.
Ears forward. Stood. Went in when it was light.

Solstice, Fourth Floor

Perrin Mallowdene

The longest night. The radiator knocks
like someone small who wants to be let in.
I have pushed the bed against it, and I lie
curled around the heat, the way the old ones did.

Down in the alley the snow comes slantwise
through the one lamp. The trumpet man is quiet.
Up on the shelf the brass keeps what it keeps,
a little gold against the long dark.

I am too big for this room, and I fit it.
Both things are true at the bottom of the year.
Tomorrow there will be a minute more of light.
Tonight the warmth is the hoard, and I keep it.

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