Poetry By Rachael Ikins

      Thomas and Diane Jones CC




Footprints in New Snow: Wolf

Darkness. Barefoot, hyacinth in my hands. Breathe. Dogs wrestle an old squirrel too stiff to reach tree safety. In the dark of my body’s interior my knee. Aches. Barometer, life and death. I choose to protect my heart. Squirrel scrambles out of reach. He pants, hugs bark. One false twitch, an open field for dogs to chase squirrels to the heart of the matter.  No blood on limb nor skin. 
Inhale hyacinth’s dark offering, what is the word for how your hair smells after flying in snow. That scent rises from your own bare warmth, naked feet in drifted crystal, the heat of your between, pulling moonlight from the sky. That is the answer; moon smells like a wanting woman, diamonds in her teeth. Howling.

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​Rachael Ikins is the author of the award winning poetry collection Just Two Girls, For Kate, Broken Spoons, A Handbook for Alchemists, and The Woman with Three Elbows. Young reader books A Piglet for David and The Magic Blankie as well as fantasy Totems and thriller, Haven, many illustrated with her art. 

When she sits down to work, her 5 year old blue jawed triggerfish and her carnivorous plants start yelling “starvation.”
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She lives on a small lake, planted a garden and cares for a stand of 50 year old sugar maples and the dragons who roost in them. Find her at www.claresongbirdspub.com, Raw Earth Ink, Cyberwit, FinishingLine Press and Foothills and in many fine journals such as Red Wheelbarrow, Panoply, Synkroniciti Magazine, Braindump and more.