Shelter

poem by Sofia Lago

​​There is, tucked inside a spherical glass ornament, a detailed scene.
It is contained.
Quiet.
 
Here, the world is muted.
A bay’s tide rocks with lazy tranquility;
a breeze is a butterfly wing’s flutter. Wind chimes
chime over a porch’s snow-dusted railing,
more melodious than church bells, candy floss soft--
driftwood on seashells on frosted glass.
 
At dusk, the sky paints itself the color of driftwood jingle,
a petrified monarch’s harlequin scheme lacking black.
 
Instead, black rests on the roots of the aspen trees,
which sentinel the
winter-kissed mountains that shadow
the shore. It comes as feathers
dropped
from careless crows ruffling their tails, leaving them to
carpet the forest floor.
 
That muted forest—muted, subdued—shelters
butterflies with breezy wingbeats,
crows losing their ashen coats,
vixens wearing well-loved house dresses with threadbare seams.
 
Forward steps the vixen through the watchful aspen grove
into the daylight dappled dell. A creek runs,
nimble,
forevermore swift from zephyrs carrying the fragrance of fall—newly sharpened pencils,
decomposing leaves,
the afternoon’s yellow sunshine.
 
The vixen’s petite paw finds the larger print of a
non-softly-treading wolf, whose
howl the wind mimics when
it evolves into a gust. Then it fades, bit by bit,
the noise,
the evolution,
and from the dell to the forest to the schoolhouse to the porch to the shore,
there falls again a hush.
 
Inside the sphere is an intricate landscape,
contained,
quiet. ​

About the writer

Sofia is PhD student from Queens recently transplanted to the U.K., working on a dissertation about fairy tales at the University of Bristol. She traditionally uses her background in historical and folklore studies as inspiration for poetry. Her creative works have been features in Folio, Birds Piled Loosely's 2016 Election Anthology, A Lonely Riot, Twisted Vine Literary Arts Journal, Junto Magazine, and The Voices Project.