3 Poems by Gigi Marks

Undoing

When it is time to let the scar
of earlier injury grow weaker,
to let the dark ridges of healed bark
separate and crack, let weather
in, like ice that dams the river,
and when the light of day begins
to shine through, touch places
not revealed before, then it is
also time to let undoing take
its way, through bark and wood,
and heart, and heavier branches:
letting them fall.


Before Spring

You and I were happy,
held in the tight grip of the frost
that could chill deep so easily,
the cold nights and mornings
that could freeze without any
force at all. How bright it all was,
ice that slipped under great
drifts of snow, sky turned pearl-
white in snowfall, every step
a strike onto shimmering paths
and you and I were the dark
shadows attached by slippery
soles, we were a bundle of twigs
held close by a hand ready
for a fire, you and I were,
before spring, brought together
for all the warmth of our great
bodies, even for awhile, and
we were happy then.

 
In the Wake

In the wake of the long winter,
one week of thaw re-freezes
and the sap buckets set in the maple trees
hang empty. The day,
a child’s face, glowing with cold, and
the snow with its wind sweeping
it along is taking us back
to the coldest hours, just as the round
opening in the rotten tree trunk
calls back the woodpecker to be
busy again. Imagine spring,
like this but with so much that drives
the winter out and pulls the sap
from maple trees. And even more
than that once the ground
unfreezes and isn’t cold.


Bionote

Gigi Marks lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York, near the western edge of Cayuga Lake. She regularly publishes poems in a variety of literary journals. Her collections of poems include, most recently, Close By, published by Silverfish Review Press in 2012, What We Need, published by Shortline Editions, and Shelter, published by Autumn House Press.