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Winter Hush
by J Brian Long

Between worlds in the dark
of an April morning, my son's
voice is a wind in the orchards
of a dream; it calls from among
the limbs, from high in the hum

of the blossoms, and my name
is a sting that wakes me to find
him standing at the bedside
whispering of snow. I mumble
the air too warm for anything

but rain; the petals of the anjou
are being blown against the pane,
that he is mistaking their fall
for flurries: he should go,
he should sleep: his steps

away from me become the thump
of pears falling to the grass. In the dawn-
light, I find three inches of winter
have smitten the dandelion fires,
have shushed the bluebells overnight,

dusted the birdsong with a pearl-
white silence. A startled sun blushes
the horizon, jonquils bow to one
another, aghast, and he asks me,
soft, why I seem so unusually quiet.









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