'FEATHERED ALPHABET'
by Annie G. Rogers (2009 Pushcart Nominee)

The snow begins
it falls and no one can stop it
it covers the back fence and flings itself
outward, a lost thing—
erasing time and memory in its great silence.

A running figure
on the last scrap of day
a rope of footfalls writes the script
wind turns to smoke and threads—
that double what the voice can say.


_
(A version of "Feathered Alphabet" first appeared in Annie G. Rogers' book, A Shining Affliction.)

_
Annie G. Rogers
is a poet, as well as a writer of memoir and fiction. She has published two books that combine her clinical work in psychoanalysis with memoir: A Shining Affliction, and The Unsayable. She has edited a volume of short fiction and memoir writing from her workshops with writers in Ireland, Charlie's Chasing the Sheep. She is currently working on a book of poems, Approximate Names. She is Professor of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Psychology at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.