By Xiaoly Li

The sun threads through
skeletal trees, casting
long shadows on snow.
We sit on a bench at a cliff
above the Hudson
the water under the Tappan Zee
half-frozen.
We open our lunch,
salad, nuts, rice.

I wear gloves
to hold my chopsticks,
and pull my dog
in my lap for warmth.
Two bald eagles cross the sky,
settle into a pine-top nest
at the edge of Tallman Mountain.

Such ordinary grace here.
Yellow reeds
warm this world.

Are we crazy? you say.

Our laughter turns
a few walkers' heads.
Why did I ever think
winter was not
beautiful?

Now I feel the memory
in the body, the cold stories of
the past
I once loathed,
like ice
carried forward
by the river's slow current.

~~~

Xiaoly Li is a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship Grant recipient (2022). Her poetry collection Every Single Bird Rising (FutureCycle Press, April 2023) was a Zone 3 Press Book Award finalist. Her poetry collection Wakening Between Worlds (Serving House Books, January 2026) has been short-listed in the 2024 Cinnamon Literature Award Adjudication. Its older version was a finalist in the 2023 Diode Editions Book & Chapbook Contests and the Word Works’ 2024 Washington Prize. Her poetry is featured or anthologized in Crab Orchard Review, Prism International, Tampa Review, Salamander, Chautauqua, Saranac Review, Spillway, Rhino, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for Best New Poets, a Pushcart Prize (five times), and Best of the Net (four times). Her website is www.xiaolyli.art.