I am not one of your
Long-legged creatures
Cloaked in some assemblage
Of night on weaker wings,
But I wish I could be
More than anything.
Disobedient.
Give me spring in grey cast.
The march of black scars
On thin birches before green
Quells the necessary violence.
Soon, I will carve you out of me.
Snowbanks do not dream
Nearly as often as flowers.
They do not steal the sun
To spiral closer to the light,
But reflection amounts
To nothing but snowmelt.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 6.
A poet and artist from coastal Maine, Hailey Talbert is the author and illustrator of the environmental poetry collection, Precipice (Telling Room, 2022), which was recognized with the Tidal Shift Award. Her poems have appeared in Echoes from the Basement (Telling Room, 2022) and It Rains Diamonds on Neptune (Telling Room, 2025). She is an English student at Yale College and is studying at Balliol College, University of Oxford, from 2025-26.
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