Winter Light
What is it about this late afternoon light
in December, with its absolute stillness,
its blues, its few browns, its deep evergreen
greens and its scattered patches of white,
that somehow seems to know it’s a Sunday,
this light that’s come far, low over the fields,
now at rest, bright in the treetops, with no
ambition to reach any farther into the day.
Soon, in the silvery dusk, it will gather
some shadows about it and leave. We’ll be
able to see it then, paused on the horizon,
warming its hands at a bonfire of clouds.
—Ted Kooser
Sue Ellen Thompson, of Oxford, MD, is the first “featured writer” in the Delmarva Review. Among her published works, a sixth book of poems, SEA NETTLES: NEW & SELECTED POEMS, was published in 2022. She has been an instructor at The Writer’s Center, in Bethesda, since 2007, and has previously taught at Middlebury College, Binghamton University, the University of Delaware, and Central Connecticut State University. She received the 2010 Maryland Author Award from the Maryland Library Association.
Doris Bishop Baruch Gerlach says
I could paint a picture in my mind from the words describing this little bit of heaven here on the eastern shore of Maryland. Thank you Ted! Also was wondering if Sue ever lived in Columbia Maryland and belonged to the “Open Door Fellowship Group” from Marvin UMC. This Sue Thompson was so helpful in helping decipher the many complications of life.