We first met Linda Benninghoff last summer, when we found her magical “Butterflies.” Assistant poetry editor at Womenwriters.net,  Benninghoff has has published six chapbooks, one of which won an Editor’s Choice Award from Kritya, an arts center in Kerala, India.  Next month, Lummox Press will publish her first full-length collection, Whose Cries Are Not Music. Of all her interesting, variable work, we found Sea Choirs just perfect for this middle of winter.

Sea Choirs

The sea has its choirs,
lofty, piping, the brown-backed
cormorant winging over winter buoys
and white-crested waters.

Around the lonely lighthouse
gulls place themselves at the
wooden outhouse,
cry in what might be
speech-of faraway things,
of searing pain, the joy
of diving.

The sea is full of song,
and the birds keep
a tryst with heaven this Christmas
in the shining skies they touch.