When your hands hesitated, circled the fields
   but never landed, stopped their tracing to winter
in the safety of know regions, silence filled
my mouth, a burning cold. My body was left land, 
                                  the birds flown northward. 

A season has its own torn threads. Mine are rushes
woven by wind, your hand in my hair, now empty nest. 

I pray for rain; rain, for that touch on my skin. Oh, 
let your fingers turn wing, let the urgency of instinct
                                            direct you back, let you remember. 

And be it that my lands warm, again, to you. That the
spring has not been too long in coming. 

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Karla Van Vliet is the author of two collections of poems, From the Book of Remembrance and The River From My Mouth. She is an Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize 2016 finalist and was nominated for a 2015 Pushcart Prize. Her poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Blue Heron Review, The Tishman Review, Green Mountains Review, Cronnog Magazine and others.  Van Vliet is a co-founder and editor of deLuge Journal, a literary and arts journal.