Clouds have not yet formed. The sky
is onyx blue. Bare tree branches
reach until they thin, mirror the web
of roots I can only imagine.
What I see more clearly in this dark
than in the sharper contrast after dawn,
the solid rise from the ground, the certainty
of its winter black, the lift of its limbs.
How does branching happen? When,
why, with what abandon, with what care
does the singular trunk give up, give way,
open up to branches? Holy moment that.
And this unclouded one.
–
Margaret Rozga, UWM at Waukesha Professor of English Emerita, served as the 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate and the 2021 inaugural artist/scholar in residence at the UW Milwaukee at Waukesha Field Station. She has published six books, most recently Restoring Prairie (2024) and Holding My Selves Together: New & Selected Poems (2021). Her poems have also appeared in many literary journals.
© 2025, Margaret Rozga
Halfway Down the Stairs 