EXHALING WINTER
Poem by Diane Eagle Kataoka
Snow retreats up mountain walls
pulled on a timed tether
Grasses and brush spring back
to vertical
avalanching winter’s skin
Along a rivulet, pale shoots test the air
while catkins of aspens
shiver in silver light
I smell spring long before color
flushes tree and ground
Tentative breaths still redolent
with winter’s waning chill
ride over my skin
Whispering a promise of warmth
Inhale gently
gaining green.
“Exhaling Winter” by Diane Eagle Kataoka appears in the new Silver Birch Press release Silver: An Eclectic Anthology of Poetry & Prose — a 240-page book of poetry, short stories, novel excerpts, stage play scenes, and essays from 62 accomplished and up-and-coming authors in the U.S. and U.K.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Diane Eagle Kataoka lives at eight thousand feet in the Eastern Sierra, where she skis and hikes. A researcher for the late Leon Uris (Trinity and The Haj), she was director of marketing and communications for the Music Academy of the West, as well as editor-in-chief of the Mammoth Times and Mammoth Sierra Magazine. She is currently a freelance writer and editor, poet and blogger. (Visit her blog at mammothlakesview.com.) Diane’s chapbook Snow Globe, published by Two Birds Press, is a poetic history of five seasons in a mountain ski town.
Silver: An Eclectic Anthology of Poetry & Prose is available at Amazon.com.
Silver Birch Press 