In this week’s poem, Myronn Hardy limns a winter of the skies and of the heart. I love this poem’s vivid lyric leaps and images, and how viscerally it brings us into this quotidian evening of cold and ache.

Hardy is the author of, most recently, “Aurora Americana” (Princeton University Press).  His poems have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Poetry, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. He teaches at Bates College.

The Blizzard

You fling the calla lilies into the grocery cart.

They’re perplexed over the bag of wild rice    red

fish wrapped in brown paper. The cashier tells you

of the blizzard predicted for this evening. We forget

we live in Maine. At home you place the flowers in a glass jar.

The wild rice boils. You read Gurnah    Morrison    Baldwin

collapsed on the gray sofa. The lilies’ stems are teal tentacles.

Snow swirls    slaps the windows. The one who lost

you is with another. The blizzard within her could

have    wanted to kill you. A dead man left on asphalt frozen.

Another is removing her gold hoops.

Another knows her neck    clavicle.

What have you survived? Arms out    bare

in the cold    you’re freezing.

– Myronn Hardy

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. DEEP WATER: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “The Blizzard,” copyright © 2024 by Myronn Hardy, appears by permission of the author.