By Matt Hohner

Jasontown Road
Westminster, Maryland 

Three-fifths of a mile of gravel cleaves a snow-covered field 
in two on a round hillcrest, curves past an island of trees 

at stream bottom in a wan moonscape of white under
sapphire sky. Twelve degrees Fahrenheit. Two p.m. 

North wind whips horsetails of snow across the icy lane ahead.
Five new vacants today: broken-into, scavenged, left for dead. 

Red-tailed hawk scans the earth for prey in widening gyres. 
Where do they go when they have nowhere left? 

Somewhere, four tiny feet scurry across a vast, frozen tundra.
Somewhere, talons and beak circle above their next warm meal. 

About the author:

Matt Hohner has won or placed in numerous national and international poetry competitions, with publication credits in literary journals in seven countries on five continents. Hohner has held two residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, with one forthcoming at Anam Cara Retreat in Ireland. His publications include Rattle: Poets Respond, Sky Island Journal, Takahē, The Storms Journal, New Contrast, Live Canon, The Cardiff Review, and Prairie Schooner. An editor with Loch Raven Review, Hohner’s first collection Thresholds and Other Poems (Apprentice House) was published in 2018. You can learn more about Matt Hohner on his website here.