Chelsea Woodard, a finalist in Narrative’s Seventeenth Annual Poetry Contest, is the author of three poetry collections, including At the Lepidopterist’s House, winner of the 2022 Michael Waters Poetry Prize and the 2024 Poetry by the Sea Book Award. In addition, her work is included in the anthologies In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy and Poetry Is Bread (2025). She earned an MFA from Johns Hopkins University and a PhD from the University of North Texas, and she teaches at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.

What My Father Taught Me about the Snow

by Chelsea Woodard
That there is always a road reaching
into the trees, widening in the glow
of your headlights. That there is a way to rest
your left wrist lightly on the steering wheel to guide the car
while you shift, because in this plummeting weather
there is nothing to do but lean in and surrender—
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