Merced in Winter by Carol Eve Ford

She rises early in mists and tendrils from 

the restless Pacific, pulls her cloak around her chin,

lets it trail behind her as she moves landward.

Sweet, tousled, she gathers in muffled community

with her sisters, who drift together 

through the tangled Eden of the California coastal ranges,

delighting in the cozy fires and woodsmoke 

their passing inspires.

Catching a breath of warm air, 

she lets her robes billow to the ground,

spirals into bright blue heavens, invisible,

to look down over the golden ridges of home.

The Great Valley stretches inland.

She recognizes him in the distance,

tall, rugged, standing, waiting.

She gathers her skirts in silver bunches to pass over,

but seeing the contours of his face,

resplendent in winter’s twilight,

her gentle heart bursts with delight,

its wild beating rumbling over ridges,

echoing down canyons,

showering him with laughter, until at last 

she falls without reservation into his embrace

adorned in a thousand veils of lace so fine

they shimmer in infinite delicacy, 

draping down and down.

Exquisite layers, bright, elegant, diaphanous, 

blanket him in silence, stillness, purity.

Merced in winter.

As an Alaskan with deep roots in Montana and California, Carol Eve Ford is a poet, storyteller, actor, writer and director piecing life together out of cobwebs in a windstorm. She very much appreciates those moments of looking up and finding kindred spirits around, though they be far-flung. Being happily a full-time Grandmother, Carol probably don’t look up often enough. She has two pieces, one prose, one poetry, published in the Yosemite Conservancy’s commemorative volume, Inspiring Generations: 150 Years, 150 Stories in Yosemite. Carol's poems have appeared in the quarterly poetry journal, Song of the San Joaquin, along with a number of poems published in Medusa’s Kitchen, and in California Federation of Chaparral Poets, Dad’s Desk, Dad’s Desk special editions, and Brevities.