Herbert Orlofsky

Rural Winter

Winter light. Muted light.
Branches bare with crows.
No sound but the old leaves
Scratching the hardened ground.
A tightness of trees, air, sky.
A world bending into its silence.

Winter sparrows. Winter trees.
Hunger tarries not far from here.
An old sky, iron hard.
No harbingers, nothing, whiteness, fear.

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Herbert Orlofsky’s poems have also appeared in Confrontation, the Wisconsin Review, and Beauty for Ashes Poetry Review. He is a retired clinical psychologist living in Connecticut.