James K. Zimmerman, “This Is the End of Winter, 
This Is the Beginning”

E.E. Cummings Prize, selected by Nicole Terez Dutton


This Is the End of Winter,
This Is the Beginning 

I know I should not 
pick up by hand this 
 
mess of gray fur, russet 
fur. Bones. Teeth.
 
The holly branch clipped 
last fall has waited 
 
here on the ground 
since November, 
 
survived the white 
of snow, the freezing,
 
to be slid under 
the carcass, to flip 
 
the shell of life into 
the hedge of arbor vitae.
 
I see, I think, a rabbit leg.
 
And look: The lawn 
wants to be green.

James K. Zimmerman is an award-winning poet and frequent Pushcart Prize nominee.  His work appears in Pleiades, Chautauqua, American Life in Poetry, Nimrod, Reed, Vallum, and Tipton Poetry Journal, among others. He is the author of “Little Miracles” (Passager, 2015) and “Family Cookout” (Comstock, 2016), winner of the 2015 Jessie Bryce Niles Prize.