Beret Skorpen-Tifft writes poetry and fiction. She lives in South Portland, Maine with her husband and two children. She works in the non-profit field and is a long distance runner. She received her BA from Hampshire College and her MFA in fiction from Vermont College. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory, The Louisville Review, Passages North, The Red Owl, The Sow’s Ear, The Sun, Maine Things Considered, Maine Times, and the Bangor Daily News.

Ice Storm

     by Beret Skorpen-Tifft

The day you left

ice came in curtains of water

asking the forest for something

nearly impossible.

It looked like God had taken his

anger out first on the white birches,

then on last fall’s queen anne’s lace

and dusky golden rod

still left standing in the meadow.

They weren’t the hardest hit.

That would be us. We remained cold and even colder,

my hand wrapped around his small palm.

Your truck bumped up and down.

We watched for the red tail lights until dawn.

But then came the sun and the moon,

and the sun and moon again.

Hallelujah for that,

for it tracked our days.

When I would reach for your skin,

and come back with nothing,

and even more than nothing,

I would come back with space

small enough for a field mouse to fill

but bigger than everything else on earth,

I whispered to myself amen.

© 2008 Beret Skorpen-Tifft