Linda Benninghoff

WINTER*

The silence of the snow
this winter
was like two hands praying.

After your death
I sat in the dark room
and watched the single fluorescent light
glint on my teacup.

What is the meaning of being alive?
Is it the world coming close
to ending,--
is it two hands
clasped, meeting?
After the whiteness--
the new green shoots rising?

* * *

WHEN ROADS CRY OUT

When that day
No longer comes,
When the roads cry out
Because of their endlessness,
And the frozen rivers
Crackle as they break
With the new spring,
And I am no longer
Able to lift myself
Out of despair
Because you were once all around,
Your face
Surrounding me,
Your voice
Speaking only of the future--
Then I will reflect
On seas with current
Flowing north,
Ice and glaciers,
Freezing and uninhabitable.

"Winter" was previously published in Fieralingue. Both poems appear in Benninghoff's book Whose Cries Are Not Music.

Linda Benninghoff attended Johns Hopkins University where she was an English major. She got a Masters in English with an emphasis on creative writing. While living in Baltimore, she trained to be an advocate for the disabled, and used this skill when she worked as a journalist. Her first full-length book, Whose Cries Are Not Music, has a section in it on disability.