Sea Change

For Frank

As for today each season appears to escape the calendar.

The dry meadow grasses wave in the wind, and the windows are shaking.

The soft pastel clouds in sky that want to leap into my arms.

Another cold hard winter is coming.

I feel the necessary chill in my aching bones.

The sugar maples hold fast their sap as if already falling asleep.

And the branches twinkle with frost under an angry red evening sun.

Goldenrod reaches toward the blue twilight across the meadow.

Dandelions once blossoming yellow have all gone to seed.

What will I achieve in these dreary days without you?

I want to tell you of this lonely time before winter sets in.

Before the first snow touches the cool white pine

And the ground grows coal hard and lifeless.

Once we fell in love together and at the same time.

We knew each other’s answers to the same questions.

Today you were late for supper, and the lentil soup grew cold.

The sea tides moved ever more slowly between the glaciers:

the sea thickened with ice and unforgiving.

About the Author

Beth Brown Preston is a poet and novelist. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the MFA Writing Program of Goddard College she has been a CBS Fellow in Writing at the University of Pennsylvania; and, a Bread Loaf Scholar. She has published three poetry collections with the Broadside Lotus Press and Aquarius Press/Willow Books, and two chapbooks of poetry. Her new poetry collection OXYGEN II (Aquarius Press/Willow Books, 2025) has been nominated for the Paterson Poetry Prize. Her poetry, fiction and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in many literary and scholarly journals.