This is Poetry Moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet and author Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of more than 20 books, and Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
Welcome to Poetry Moment. I’m Marjorie Maddox.
Here in late January, and in the thick of Pennsylvania winter, we acknowledge that the blustery season officially began on December 21, 2025. The official start of spring, March 20, seems a long way off.
While some love a wintery wonderland, others may agree with Jane Edna Mohler’s depiction. In today’s poem, “She’s Always Hungry,” the poet personifies winter as alluring but insatiable.
A Bucks County native, Jane Edna Mohler is the 2020 Bucks County Poet Laureate, winner of the 2016 Main Street Voices award, and Poetry Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. Generations of her family have lived in Pennsylvania, and her poems include numerous references to the state. Jane’s recent publications include Gargoyle, One Art, and Verse Virtual. Kelsay Books published her collections Broken Umbrellas (2019) and Autumn Clears (2025). Find out more at https://www.janeednamohler.com/.
About her poem “She’s Always Hungry,” the author explains, “Winter may be pretty, but I generally dislike it and the death it signifies. It doesn’t nourish, but thankfully, it ends.” Listen for the poet’s advice on ways to hasten the entrance of spring.
Here’ s “She’s Always Hungry” by Jane Edna Mohler:
She’s Always Hungry
Winter arrives with the blank
face of a runway model, languid
and sheer as the chiffon scarf
that drifts across her shoulders.
Bored by the heat of living,
she abhors the goo and mess.
Old German named her
the time of water.
She makes my lake crack
and groan. That crisp
look she gives, so alluring
you’ll ignore the chilly
clues of flat infatuation.
You don’t stand a chance.
An empty retreat that never serves
meals; she wants us to learn
the difference between hunger
and greed. Praise the rare blue sky,
the weak brushstrokes of charcoal
trees, but don’t fall for those sharp
bones that grin from under
her waxen skin. Prepare
a bed of crocuses, anxious
to spring from her grave.
“She’s Always Hungry” was first published in ONE ART: a Journal of Poetry. It is the final poem in the poet’s 2025 collection, Autumn Clears (Kelsay Books).
That was “She’s Always Hungry” by Jane Edna Mohler. Thanks for listening.
Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox, Mondays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. You can view more episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
