Winter Stars

My neighbor fills her winter garden with oaktag cut-outs of red and yellow stars—hangs them from her bird feeder or glues them atop the planting sticks she’s left in the dirt between withered blooms. Yesterday, she knocked on my door, and I opened it to find her hands overflowing with stars—each hole-punched and threaded with yarn—a new constellation for these days of early dark.

“These are for you to hang places,” she said simply, knowing of my need for joy this Christmas season. As we smiled and hugged one another, I received them in my cupped hands. Now stars dangle from my doorknobs and brighten shadowed corners—an unexpected gift of light.

moon splinters
on the river—the glint
of ice floes

Published by

Penny Harter

Penny Harter is published widely in journals and anthologies. Her most recent books are Recycling Starlight (2010), The Night Marsh (2008) and The Beastie Book (2009), a hardcover children's alphabestiary of imaginary creatures. Recipient of three poetry fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and a 2011 fellowship from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, she has also won awards from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the Poetry Society of America, and the William O. Douglas Nature Writing Award. She is also the co-author with her husband, William J. (Bill) Higginson, of The Haiku Handbook.

10 thoughts on “Winter Stars”

    1. Hi Kathe—and thanks for liking my work. I'm at VCCA, writing lots and loving it here. My two weeks residency is up Tuesday at 6:30 a.m.—time is melting away. Hope all's well with you.

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    2. Thanks, Kathe! I thought I'd already replied but don't see evidence of my having done so here. I'm grateful for your interest in and appreciation of my work. And now, back to my last full day of writing in my studio here at VCCA.

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    1. Thank you, Martin, for responding! As I said in response to Alan, I'm still not getting tinywords in e-mal, so visited the site gain this morning to just see whether there were any additional responses.

      The natural world runs through all my poems—free verse as well as haiku, haibun, tanka, etc. You can visit my web site and click on "publications" for samples of work from a number of my books. And there's a link to my blog on it where I've kept up professional (and a bit of personal) news since Bill died. I'm currently finishing two weeks in residence as a fellow at Virgina Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) and it's been wonderful–lots more writing.

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    1. Thanks so much, Alan! Ce Rosenow forwarded me the URL for this, since, although I had recently subscribed, I wasn't yet getting tinywords. And I'm still not, so I just re-subscribed. In e-mail,

      If you'd like, I'll share with you via e-mail a couple of new slightly longer poems—one also featuring stars, and one the winter night sky.

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