An Ill-Meaning Verse for March 15, 2022

His horse's hooves from homeland soil disroot
what few pale blooms of truth remain.
Disputing Putin, Vlad the Invader, rides
with flaccid biceps flapping. Time decides
a tyrant's title; glory rides his brain —
a rigid organ, but still flapping pain
and blood for sweat. By orders, all impute
the lie to truths he tramples. Truths refute
by depth of root. But someone rooted hides
behind him, surely — thinking of March ides.

Full Moon, Winter Solstice

Well must you know: what song are you? —— calls midnight
Crow. Though Solstice eve may lay day low,
dusk brings serene Selene to Moonmost glow.
Benighted, quieted: all things (amid light

growing, echoing occluded Sun)
melodically dispel their glooms —— despite
day's lengthiest night-muting. Full Moon's height
re-echoes off the Soul —— that Silent One,

of Many. Look, now, down this open well.
The deep shades, rounded, hush appearances
to singleness: all shapes, all distances.
But soon midnight's Moon-echoes, there, will swell
to carol in the year! Your Christmasses
are Solstices to me —— as you know well.

Grapevines, Winter Solstice

Branchings and runners fall shorter,
as short as they ever will be;
they fall to gloved hand and clipper
on winter solstice day.

Thickest trunks stay, rising through snow.
Thinnest vinings from the longest
of days, that bore greenest of growth,
fall, now days are shortest.

Oh, our summer seemed so endless
when countless thoughts clustered to mind —
although some vines would stand fruitless,
and many plans would end,

brought short by the trimming of hours;
and now celebrants trim yule trees,
and dwell with a sigh on past years
and long-gone solstice days.

I cut them short as they will be,
all year, these runners and branchings,
and hope that the shrinking of day
and dim thoughts of endings

will yield to times when even Time
will grow, granting days that will be
longer, when greening thoughts will climb
higher, nearer the sky —

at least along wires that we string
across land, across snow, to hold
such hopes. A solstice day must bring
something new, something old —

or bring short the old to unfold
into the new. Who can foresee
what one short day's trimming will yield,
this winter solstice day?