MARGARET FIELAND was born and raised in Manhattan.
She used to live in the Boston area just after the blizzard of 1976, thus missing the opportunity to abandon her car in a snowbank and walk home. She now lives outside of Boston with her partner and a large number of dogs.
In spite of earning her living as a computer software engineer, she turned to one of her sons to put up the first version of her website, a clear illustration of the computer generation gap.
An accomplished flute and piccolo player, she can also write backwards and wiggle her ears.
Thanks to her father’s relentless hounding, she can still recite the rules for pronoun agreement in both English and French.
Her articles, poem, and stories have appeared in anthologies and journals such as Main Channel Voices, Front Range Review and All Rights Reserved. Her book, “The Angry Little Boy,” will be published by 4RV publishing in early 2012. Visit her website.
Editor’s note: Margaret’s poem At Midnight uses rhyme and repetition to create a galloping effect conducent to the story within the poem, which is itself a kind of ballad. It reads aloud so well, and the sense of foreboding and doom is overwhelming. In Winter Night, the writer’s stark metaphors of death and desolation speak of winter’s sinister presence and a deeper mystery that is not witnessed by human eyes. ~ GVB
At Midnight
Three to ride the shadowed road,
two to catch them as they slowed,
one to flee and try to warn,
none to live to see the morn.
Three rode out one moonless night
beneath the shafts of silver light
of stars above in a cloudless sky
and none of them demanded why.
Not one of them asked why they rode,
why they left their snug abode
to ride the woods that dark, dark night
beneath the shafts of silver light.
When midnight chimed they stopped and stared.
Two strangers stood with broadswords bared.
Two brothers dead without a fight,
one brother left, one to take flight.
One brother turns and flees in fright,
rides and dies that dark, dark night,
killed by strangers with broadswords bared.
Three brothers caught all unprepared.
Three to ride the shadowed road,
two to catch them as they rode,
one to flee and try to warn,
none to live to see the morn.
Winter Night
A silver sliver of slender moon
hangs high in a darkening sky.
Barren branches of empty trees
watch moonbeams as they waft by.
Broken breeze blows through empty trees.
Dead foliage flutters and flies.
Echoing dark swallows the light
of stars that flicker and hide.
A few clouds float across bright stars.
There is no light to see
a trail that twists through lonely woods
thick with layers of leaves.
Icy branches heavily droop
down over a rambling road.
A few break off and fall to earth.
A gale continues to blow.
Flakes of snow sail slowly down
to cover lanes and fields.
Fog drifts slowly across the ground
but no one is there to see.
