Annie Stenzel
No snow outside my window
(a golden shovel, after Emily Dickinson)
For just how long have I been thinking, day after day, about dying?
Whose dying? Is this another trick question I can't answer? Or is
this what my doctor likes to call, in her soothing way, just a
function of the aging process, like the mysterious itches, or the wild
perturbations my heart muscle manifests at night?
Here at the turn of the year, creeping back toward longer and
longer days, I still hunker down each morning before a
page that starts out empty, then gathers words for some new
message, or maybe just a signpost pointing at the end of my road.
Bio
Annie Stenzel was born in Illinois, but has lived on both coasts of the U.S. and on other continents at various times in her life. Her booklength collection is The First Home Air After Absence (Big Table Publishing, 2017). Her poems appear in print and online journals in the U.S. and the U.K., from Ambit to Willawaw Journal with stops at Chestnut Review, Gargoyle, Gone Lawn, On the Seawall, Psaltery & Lyre, right hand pointing, Stirring, The Ekphrastic Review, and The Lake, among others. A poetry editor for the online journals West Trestle Review and right hand pointing, she lives within sight of the San Francisco Bay. For more, see anniestenzel.com.