This poem is from the chapbook Wild Familiars by Linda Malm – NWVS #188 (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/wild-familiars-by-linda-malm-nwvs-188/
Linda Malm was published as a teen and only returned to poetry after she retired as a college dean. She won the competition to become a writer of Los Luceros (the Robert Redford/NM Film Board Enterprise) and more recently has been actively publishing both on-line and in print journals and anthologies. In 2023 Kelsay Books published her first chapbook, Winded from the Chase. Following the book launch, The Taos News reviewed it as “embracing wildness without fear.” It also noted “acute observations on mortality.” These explorations continue in Wild Familiars due for release in November, 2025 by Finishing Line Press. It was a finalist in their chapbook competition and is described in a blog by Sawnie Morris as musical, witty, and “the spirit of an elder woman—one who has arrived in beauty, alert to the gifts and complexities of the natural world… showing us the way”
The Paddock Review 