In this week’s poem, Jen Ryan Onken meditates on the cold season’s fervent red of winterberries. I love how visceral and even animate these bright fruits become against the winter landscape, and how deeply the speaker finds herself warmed and even overwhelmed by their blaze.

Onken lives and teaches in southern Maine. Her poems have appeared in SWWIM, Zocalo Public Square, The Night Heron Barks, and LEON Literary Review. Jen was the Maine Poets Society winner of their 2019 prize for previously unpublished poets. She reads manuscripts for Persea Books’ Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize.

Winterberries

It’s true, the winterberry like the wet
and put their roots down where boots
crack ice and send hearts reaching
for upper branches to cut them
down. I vase the winter when color drains
the land. These touchstones push red
light further into snow-trimmed pools.
They sing a wilder song, brimming
summer’s loud persimmon. I can’t help
but feel their firmness in my hands.
Trees know to hold them close. To put
some shade about their heads. Don’t go
too far! Some better than others, I suppose—
so many gone red-mad. As frost settles
into fall, leaves bend a pewter hue. All
things are touched by ice. My Love,
what fuels that winterberry-heat?
I’m scared— I’ve always kept my cool.

– Jen Ryan Onken

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. “Winterberries,” copyright © 2022 by Jen Ryan Onken, appears by permission of the author.