by Katherine Maurer

On the sixty-degree day in February, here
on a picnic blanket we should not be lying on
under insects that should not have hatched

from the slow creek, which should not be warm enough.
Too big to be gnats, hovering too still to be flies
changing direction abruptly as spaceships.

I’m uneasy because I have no name
for them, don’t know their intentions. They are outliers,
like everything now—lonely line this year draws on the graph,

the sun at the wrong angle to be warm, winter sky smeared
with cirrus clouds no one planned to be under. A man
with a telephoto lens enters the frame, focuses, considers,

then walks on. Wind hisses through the dead oak leaves,
a cold sound, as if we are listening to a recording of winter,
the way we would to rain on a sound machine, to fall asleep.

_________________________________________________________

Katherine Maurer received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her MA in clinical psychology from Eastern Illinois University. Her poetry has been published in journals including Gettysburg Review, Poetry Northwest, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, Mid-American Review, Cave Wall, and Sycamore Review, and twice-nominated for Pushcart Prizes. She lives in Champaign, Illinois and works as a mental health therapist. See katherinemaurer.com and katherinemaurer.substack.com."