Donna Spruijt-Metz

cantfindit

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         the hoof withdrawn 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