Maureen Donatelli lives in Abbotsford, BC where she received her BA in English from The University of the Fraser Valley.
Besides all things poetic, Maureen enjoys photography and spending time with her children. Her work has appeared in several online publications including Connotation Press, Yes, Poetry, vox poetica, OVS, Willows Wept Review, Adroit Journal, and Innisfree Poetry Journal.
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Murmuration
A voice between water and sky
is telling not so secret
secrets –
I am a vapid thing.
I wish to say it.
The wind carves this timbered
crackling house
that’s never done complaining.
I wander through, talking back
with open hands, palms up, eyeless
eating time, begging for you
with a heart
beating water.
You brought sweet white lilies
at the cusp of spring
pushing aside the long snowless winter.
White soft lilies given to one who loves
falling snow.
This is where I stay, gilding the past.
I feel evening will bring
a dusting.
Portentous, starlings in the hundreds
reel thick, stippled silhouettes like dark art
inking a white movie screen sky. The sea gathers
their shadows along the merged line
of coved and open water.
What is it, life or death
in the space between? What does it matter.
The sea can be counted on
to gather what it can
of both.
Tinker
The surprise on waking
snow hanging from the porch railing
wet drapes, pooling folds
and the great black oak standing foolish
with its green leaves
and green moss
splattered, an unwilling rack
for the white weight.
Such an impropriety
so early in the season
too early in the season;
but what can we expect
with all our indecent tinkering with the thermostat
but a summoning of winter?
Tiny Wings
Bee elegance, easy drift
and hover, noon warmth replacing morning’s cold,
a sudden, thin curtain of hail, melted.
The lilacs have finally worked out the perspective –
a mauve ocean is now flowing
under the wide kitchen window
under all this shaken out sunlight.
How we starved in the darkest
corridors of winter
refusing to breathe
even the smallest desire,
all our weightlessness forgotten
and the damn fear, thinking it the last and the last
stored up ashes
the summation of our secrets.
We have suddenly become old
and foolish
whispering hopelessness
to the grey ceiling
above our cold grey bed,
worry overflowing the cracks in the plaster.
Another winter spent lost in the same ritual—
watching snow drag colour away,
our eyes emptied purses
until the sweep of sunlit lilacs
and thaw’s sweet perfume release
and the silvery strum of tiny wings.
I pretend not to hear the sad, cascading refrain
hidden beneath
that winds around and around
pulling tight at my throat.