The Snow Has Stopped

By Jude Goodwin
Published: Jan.28, 2012.

 The snow has stopped

The snow has stopped,
it’s just rain
and what’s being blown
from the branches now,
poor sumac all loaded down,
poor deck chairs and garden path
pockmarked and cold,
and poor poet watching
as beauty slumps away,
the rose bushes
bearing their white burdens
like homeless women
heading into town.

Gravity

I’m watching things fall—
a laugh from the other room,
a letter, released from its pile,
this damn hair, always
in my face. And evidence
of something more—
shadows, ideas, whispers.
There was a day
when I believed in fate
like gravity, pulling us together
but after all this time
it’s still a mystery, you
falling to the ground
at the same rate as a couch
or a ring.
There is a lamp
that’s powered by the falling
motion of weight. A light
powered by fate
or lifting, we begin
with our arms in the air
and dark all around.

Her Music

I spend a portion
of each day in the music
of our child. She rushes home,
drops coat and books
on the table, before
her snacks, before her laptop,
she pulls the bench out,
a loyal friend
waiting waiting worn
and wobbly
for her return,
she pulls the bench out
and sits, touches the piano keys
only lightly
then presses her young soul
into their arms
and dances there—
a waltz at first,
then sonata to the garden,
sonatina for the little dog—
dances and the air lights up,
a hundred cascading points of song.
If I stand behind her
they move over my body,
up my back, when I breathe
they fill my lungs.
I close my eyes
and the sun is rising,
or appearing suddenly
from behind a storm cloud,
the room is filled
with god rays,
or there’s a dark rose bud
blooming in a tall glass vase,
growing rounder then folding
over, dropping its petals
to the polished wood,
or there’s a girl,
slender armed,
bent over such fierce fingers
a dozen young men
holding black and white horses
call out to her
Away. Away.

Jude Goodwin’s poems have been published in Burnside Review, Contemporary Verse 2, Comstock Review, White Pelican Review, Cider Press Review and various online journals. Jude is on the Top Ten lists for Poet of  the Decade IBPC: New Poetry Voices, was shortlisted in the CBC Radio Literary Awards twice, and recently received Honorable Mention in the Jessie Bryce Niles Chapbook Competition. She has also been shortlisted many times in the Guardian Poetry Workshop.

Jude freelances through her Squamish company, Goodwin Studios, working as a creative designer and web developer.  These poems were first published in the online journal Eclectica.

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