Donna Spruijt-Metz
Donna Spruijt-Metz is a Jewish poet and the author of General Release from the Beginning of the World (Parlor Press/Free Verse Editions, 2023). A MacDowell Fellow, she is the recipient of the 2023 Harbor Review Editions Editor’s Prize. An emeritus psychology professor, MacDowell fellow, rabbinical school drop-out, and former classical flutist, she was featured as one of 5 over 50 debut authors in Poets & Writers Magazine. Her new book, To Phrase a Prayer for Peace, is forthcoming from Wildhouse Publishing in 2025. She lives in Los Angeles. Source
Hoof
Is it that I have had a richness
of choices, have I gazelled
sideways from one riverstone to the next?
Or has this been a series
of false starts—
the hoof withdrawn
at the slightest snow?
January’s Wolf Moon calls her pups
into the night—marks
their necessary kill. We all
need to eat
even in snow—hoof paused
over the water—my heart says
trust—my tracks say
doubt
Published:
2023
Length:
Shorty
Literary Movements:
Contemporary
Anthology Years:
2025
Themes:
Doubt & Fear
Faith & Hope
Mental Health
Nature
Literary Devices:
Enjambment
a line break interrupting the middle of a phrase which continues on to the next line
Quatrain
A stanza made of four lines.
Rhetorical Question
a question asked for effect, not necessarily to be answered