Minus 42, Plus 9

a step away from the graywhite world
off the cliff and to what warm breath
what greengold chasm
what impossible delight

opening

because in this closing of the year
i find another narrow door
to slip through—somelight
like you came into the world
all pent-up fuss and bother

more than true for once desire
to escape without admitting it—
sometimes
proclaiming it—

now these boxes and ribbons
become remembrance, smoothing over, wrapping up
and making pretty
ordinary, how mothers and daughters fit together,
spool apart

Thaw

we’re down to icy slush, footstep-shaped
margins of grass or sodden islands
sudden lakes, squished plastic bags
sidewalk-washed downstream

the dripping we heard overnight a dream-
breath of spring, sheets too warm
the same winter birds but heard
with the door cracked

how things get ugly before getting better
like a healing bruise, the heart
churns, chugs, pumps again and
in winter’s dreg-end we sweep away
the debris

Thyme

not the smell of summer but a memory
earth, sun, sweat
or skin or breath, all of it
fading. where a heart stirs yet
beneath these layers of snow

tired of the season’s responsibility
our nerves, words, glances dry-
cracked as winter knuckles
those leaves that still cling, nearly
unrecognizable to our warmer selves

 

 

This winter

is snow on ice on ice on snow
and we know this is metaphor
also, this floundering through drifts
and bleak shivering, a slip and a fall

juncos flit and chickadees
never give up their song, the warning note
for all these branches bent under
their own frozen weight, summer’s broken stems
brittle and glazed

how far down do we hold our love’s roots, the seeds
and is this the winter
that kills them

Moldy

Maybe you shouldn’t have looked in here, after so many weeks

or months? to find your friends talking about God knows and eight or nine expired poetry challenges, that feeling

like skipping church for a year, then sitting in the town chapel singing Christmas carols with strangers—

didn’t you want to cry? and didn’t you stop yourself, a disciplined no? but listen, I’m telling you

yes: find what’s worth saving, a fresh heart beneath all that must

 

A long-lined acrostic dedicated to the long-neglected crew at Yeah Write.

Blessing for December

May you be warm and have light, candle-
burning and yet
may you be at peace
in the curling dark
listening to stillness but

may you hear the song!
the skies and the earth and every encounter
the rhythms of ice and wind
may they be a sign to you

to hold hope in your heart
the rise and soar
the resolution

on wanting to share “To Earthward”

a day of sudden hard light:
we’ve grown so tired
watercolor gray, so
with each visible sunbeam
we anticipate snow melting
on the verge, imagine the bee-
house warming and all green
pushing from the other side,
touch to touch, still seeking
wisdom’s communion
but tree-tough, immune
to frost, to blossom

You can read Frost’s “To Earthward” here.

charity begins

and at home, ends
like the soggy plastic bag
blown winter-hard
across open yards
from the neighbor’s
recycling bin

on this falling edge

tell your autumn self, this fountained day
of wordy unmusical frustration is nothing
to regret. ask your winter self, who will make
work of the past? what is your spring self
but an ideal to grope for, in sympathy
with the young? you let those hours go.
(see the spiders already moving in, rose-hips,
crickets?) no need to reinvent or be clever
in your acts of love. your voice—broken,
burning, sleep-rough, shrill—will be here,
a sun-pledge.