Realism

-Snowy Fields, painting by Tom Keough-

Snow lies in the foreground
in waves.

The curve line echoes
on the treetops,
and comes harder and tighter
like gathering clouds.

Between the dark
a path, lit by a volley of lights
so a night walker, if there
is one, can find her way.

On each side a bare birch,
the left one in shadows,
the one on the right is shone upon
in a rare hour of clarity.

The sky, barely visible,
conceals its drama for now.
With us are things to pass,

snow, birches, earthlights.

Pui Ying Wong’s new collection of poetry The Feast is forthcoming from MadHat Press in 2021. She has written two full-length books of poetry: An Emigrant’s Winter (Glass Lyre Press, 2016) and Yellow Plum Season (New York Quarterly Books, 2010)—along with two chapbooks. She has received a Pushcart Prize. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Plume Poetry, New Letters, Zone 3, and The New York Times, among others. Born and raised in Hong Kong, she now lives in Cambridge Massachusetts with her husband, the poet Tim Suermondt.