A Poem by Michael H. Brownstein

Before the Winter Storm Drifted East

 

As day changed color to color
and the great light went out in the chamber,
someone gathered straw to bury the earth.

Let the frozen fire of ice and snow collect its belongings,
let it settle into seed and burrow, weed and grass,
the tumbledown mesa over to the east.

This is a suicide land, a rock and pictograph,
a grape for encouragement and a grape for the downfall,
a green apple for the rest of us.

 

 

Michael H. Brownstein has been widely published. His latest works, Firestorm: A Rendering of Torah (http://booksonblog35.blogspot.com/) (Camel Saloon Books on Blogs) and The Katy Trail, Mid-Missori, 100F Outside and other poems (http://barometricpressures.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-katy-trail-mid-missouri-100f.html) (Barometric Pressures--A Kind of Hurricane Press). The Katy Trail, Mid-Missouri, 100F Outside And Other PoemsHis work has appeared in The Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, and others. In addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks including The Shooting Gallery (Samidat Press, 1987), Poems from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005), and I Was a Teacher Once (Ten Page Press, 2011: (http://tenpagespress.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/i-was-a-teacher-once-by-michael-h-brownstein/). He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011).