Two Poems: The Wolf: a Riddle for the Pandemic & Holding On
By Lyn Coffin
The Wolf: a Riddle for the Pandemic
This wolf had seven stones in his stomach.
Each of the stones weighed seven pounds.
Each stone wasn't rolling and so had gathered
a blanket of moss. Each blanket of moss
weighed half a pound. In each blanket of moss
were three blind mice and each of the mice
weighed half a pound. Each mouse held clenched
in its teeth an egg laid by a barnyard
goose, but each egg had been bronzed like a baby's
shoe, so each weighed exactly a pound....
This greedy wolf then swallowed a girl,
a hooded girl who was young and afraid:
nobody cares how much the wolf weighed.
HOLDING ON
On a hot metal shingle at the crest of a roof sits
a not now raucous Crow, his prodigious black
racket of a moment ago turned to stubborn
audacious silence because he holds in his
beak a ring he has just stolen from the
only gods there are but the gold he
holds in surprising triumph
will turn when the ring
falls from his yellow
beak into familiar
failure, and
everyday
loss
Lyn Coffin has had more than 30 of her books published- by Doubleday, Ithaca House, and others. Her novel, The Aftermath, was published by Adelaide Books (New York) late last year. A free ebook of this novel is available at smashwords.com/books/view/1058284 (and put MK92E in the discount code box) Poems of hers have appeared in over 100 small or large magazines. She is a poetry reader for Bracken.