In the grey morning, I find beside the road
two large footprints coupled with two small
and I worry. Grandmother hare, now arrayed
white for the winter and the snows delayed,
you are trying to tell me something. Stillness
in the deep alder thicket that was shattered
by unseasonable rain followed by wet snow
followed by rain. Golden hare eye the only
thing tilting toward me as I walk. A season
of rain in a place that signifies snow. Six
diesel trucks with empty beds and a single
occupant rattle by each morning on a road
that has only eight houses. As soon as
it is light, I walk the edges and hope not
to see you. You keep living if you live
small. Alongside me, your prints are
a dancing. I keep you living if I live small.
—
Erin Coughlin Hollowell is a poet and writer who lives at the end of the road in Alaska. She is the author of Pause, Traveler (2013) and Every Atom (2018), both published by Boreal Books, and Corvus and Crater from Salmon Poetry (2023). She has been appointed a 2022-2025 Black Earth Institute Fellow. She is the executive director of Storyknife Writers Retreat and director of the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference.
