Winter Witch by Ronda Miller

Winter Witch’s furrowed mud brow relaxes late

month. Her charcoal hair streams for miles into sluggish

Ogallala Aquifer where she lies under earth’s frozen crust.

Thighs, hardened thick as tree trunks, slide open.

Juices bubble within her womb.

Hope makes its way in rivulets to hair like follicles.

Plant roots, a tightly gathered loop lassoed by gnarled

fingers, loosen in her grasp. Dirt caked nails

curl black against forearm.

Catfish, frozen on creek bottoms, belch;

a bubble of life surface bound.

All quiet as sun rotates, brings direct gaze to deep

recesses, calls all nature components in silent cadence.

Wind whipped crevices of Arikaree Breaks

whistle. Winter Witch moans; rolls over.

February desolation

lustrating rains of April

neither here nor there…..

MAR…deface, disfigure, deform

followed by breathless CH………

~ Ronda Miller

Ronda Miller enjoys wandering the high plateau of NW Kansas where the Arikaree Breaks whisper late into the sunset and scream into blizzards and t-storms. She lives in Lawrence close to her son and a daughter. She is Poetry Contest Manager for Kansas Authors Club, and is a Life Coach specializing in working with those who have lost someone to homicide. She dances every chance she gets.

March’s Guest Editor, Ronda Miller, is Poetry Contest Manager for Kansas Authors Club and their District 2 President. Her goal in both positions is to encourage people from all backgrounds and ages to appreciate and write poetry. As a Life Coach who specializes in working with those who have lost someone to homicide, she appreciates the multitude of voices and the healing power of the written and spoken word. Her quote, ‘Poetry is our most natural connection among one another’ best exemplifies her belief in poetry. Her words can be found in Begin Again: 150 Kansas Poems, To the Stars Through Difficulties: A Kansas Renga in 150 Voices, Going Home: Poems from My Life and online in The Shine Journal – The Light Left Behind, Zingara Poet, Kansas Time + Space, and hard copy publications such as The Lawrence Journal World. She authored documentary The 150 Reride of The Pony Express and created poetic forms Loku and Ukol.