For the holiday season, here's a poem from Jeff Mann's wonderful collection Rebels. SNOW QUILT He is sleeping in a field between Berkeley Springs and Hancock, he and his Rebs exhausted from the march. After midnight a wet finger brushes his brow, and he murmurs awake, pulls the damp blanket over his face and sleeps again, corpse-still. When he wakes in first light, he wakes warm, too warm, tosses off his blanket, scatters five inches of mountain snow that sheltered him in the night like a crystal shield of righteousness, like a father’s arms, and he looks about him at the great logs of men...covered over with snow and as quiet as graves, rising one by one warm, amazed, shaking off God’s wool—and oh, how they wish they might weave of snow durable and lasting blankets, as snow shields tender wheat and the earth-tamped hope of seeds, till one breaks the mood, shouting,“Great Jehosophat! The Resurrection!” and they are up, starting small fires for a spitted beef and hardtack breakfast. Rebels is out now from Lethe Press. Check it out.
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