Imagine Yourself

Imagine yourself buried in the grass
and leaves — piled high on some wet winter day
by unseen hands that had an hour to pass

in mischief, with no set rules to obey —
for who would mind that they should rake to grace
gray, sodden ground with mounded art, to slay

an idle hour? So chill against your face,
and damp and clingy, fall the grasses, leaves,
dark twigs, and scraped-up roots. The only trace

left of you is the sense that this year grieves
for years long past, of ice and snow. But say
that now a lively, laughing wind retrieves

your hidden self to view! Thus life will play!
And somehow you rejoice in this gray day.


A note . . .

I wrote this sonnet on the 29th of December. The day was warmer than it is today, which is the first of the new year; the ground, wet; and the sky, as the sonnet says, gray.

Today, though colder, with random snowflakes being breeze-blown here and there . . . is gray again.

When I wrote the poem I thought it might do, as a New Year's expression. It still seems to suit the occasion. This may not turn out the happiest year, at least for us in United States. Yet in the gray ambiguity of our times we may yet find joy.

Cheers . . .

Happy Winter Solstice 2024

What might we mean, in saying days will gain
in light? Will we be glad when darkness wanes
by slow degrees? Is darkness some age-pain

afflicting us? Do we think joy remains
when day remains — just when dark night's intense
grip strengthens? Why then do we sing refrains

in chorus, at the Solstice? Night's immense
and starry dome seems holy — just because
cathedral-like it begs us to commence

our songs to carol out the year that was,
that is no more. To give this longest night
its proper due, before departing. Does

this night prompt all this joy? But then what might
we mean, in saying days will gain in light?

& a note . . .

Some years ago on this date, when walking up to the village post office, I encountered a man unknown to me. I said, "Happy Solstice!" He seemed a little surprised, but said, "Happy Solstice? I like that!" We went our ways; and if he did not repeat the greeting to someone else, I would have been and still would be surprised.

I make little fuss about the Solstice in winter. This morning, with Martha, I went about daily doings without any real intent to spread the good news. I did say the greeting three times — twice to Amish women who were checking us out at small food stores. The greeting seemed not to register. The second one apparently thought I was saying some variety of "Have a nice day," and replied along the lines, "Yes, and the sun is out, and that is good."

Shortly thereafter we stopped to put gasoline in our van, at the village grocery. Being checked out by a worker there whom we have known for many years, I said my Solstice greeting. When she looked puzzled, I said that the days would be getting longer from here on. "Well, that's good," she said.

I was pondering this lack of comprehension, in these three. At home, after I set the noon-meal stew on stovetop to warming, this poem arrived on the page. To some degree it seems to wonder about my own degree of comprehension.

Cheers . . .

An Impromptu for the Winter Solstice

A happy winter solstice! — to the splintered
airborne ice that flails the high plains, now.
In hours, its reach will touch us, teach us how
a storm must scourge and scour. Her mild ways countered,
crossed, and snow-cursed under — Autumn, wintered,
bids farewell; and chilling gusts endow
with speed her ghosting leaves. Let Night allow
the days their day, soon! What the storm has entered


is the door to our new Solar year —
a door now dark and closing. Understand
this: we must take this gift, without demand
for any blessings not our own. Storm-fear
besets us while a Hope, cold-winged and grand
in snowy splendor, knows her time is near.

A Poem for November Third: Planting Garlic

One never knows quite when. November third,
this time. Forking and rooting one long patch,
white hands belie heart's warming, while they scratch
at living for its clove of grace. I heard

a bitter night comes, soon. So — now to grope
in stiff, chill soil, against the stillness near,
or never. Apple leaves cling late, this year —
dusk-green, blight-mottled, holding dear to hope:

small ears, curled, cupped to hear the Delphic lyre
one last time, before falling off — to sleep
down on this narrow bed, perhaps, with sheep
snow-wool pulled high. Nearby I nurse a fire
of twigs. Hands warmed, I plant, then — and I keep
ears cupped, for dying fall. Flames, too, expire.

November Third: On the sonnet "Planting Garlic"

I usually prefer not to add notes to a poem, but also usually prefer not to place a poem onto my blog — unless it seems of the moment, particularly the ever-so-quickly changing political moment.

I placed my sonnet "The Winter King" here due to Forty-Five's blusterous insanity about building walls, which I thought might abruptly land him in an asylum. So I rushed it, a bit: the poem appeared on this blog, in consequence, in a version not-quite final. A few words in it remained restless, and changed themselves soon enough. As it turned out, I would have had time aplenty to collect rejections for the effort. Forty-Five, who here in my blog writings runs rampage also as Koom-Posh, hid behind presidential immunity, and successfully maintained the Gipper tradition of mentally incapacitated rule.

The poem I will post after posting this note, however, I am not rushing onto this blog. I wrote its first draft very nearly a year ago. It won its place in my morning recitations to myself, so that I reexamined it daily through the year. (Is "morning recitations to myself" at all unclear? Its nature is simple: I recite poems to myself while making breakfast, feeding birds, or gardening.) Several times, during this, I told myself that the sonnet had reached finality. A restlessness in the words would soon again reappear, however. Then, in recent weeks, in October, the words found their way to a resting place.

The sonnet had seemed odd to me, in one aspect — which I left alone, even so — for its mentioning a specific date. November third was the day last year when, at the last possible opportunity, I was planting garlic. That the date made its way into the poem was an accident of the moment. But throughout the following year I knew, thanks to this accident, the exact date when I had been out in the cold, aware of the oncoming deep freeze while also beset by the discomforting feelings of mortality that had been mine since sometime midsummer.

An autumnal pall of uncertainty had fallen over me, well before the season arrived.

By the time the poem came to its resting state in October, of course, the air here in the States blew thickly with thoughts, admonishments, incantations, and dreads concerning November third.

Until the poem was at rest I saw this as mere coincidence. After the words settled, I saw it still as a coincidence.

But as a meaningful one.

The autumnal pall of uncertainty is here, upon all the land — as it has been for nearly four years. The Winter King arrived in 2016, even though the true winter of his soul will not fully enwrap our world until, or unless, he is given chance to unfold it.

But it is cold, now. We need a fire of twigs to warm our hands.

The only possible place where I might put out my offering, my little twig, in time to meet the moment which is upon us, is on my blog.

However few my readers may be, here, they are ones whom I know to be able to place their humanity near just such a twig, to access such warmth as may be there.

May all fully and truly human beings in this country find their own inner self-assurance, as well as their reassurance, by November third.

Cheers . . .

The Winter King

The Winter King

You look out on a world now crusted thick
with ice and snow, now that the Winter King
sits on the eastern throne and everything
stops —— caught short, clutched in cold. A con-man's trick

klept him the scepter; social subterfuge
dispatched a knight or two who might have ruled
more justly. Blathering his rude, unschooled
prejudgements —— promising a resort refuge

for the gently taxed well-heeled, he kills
a lady bearing torch in flowing gown ——
perhaps does else, once knife has kissed her down ——
and smiles. To win a test of wills with ills!
Pleased that an ursine purse pulled down this crown
his porcine party wallows in his swills.

(Note that I posted here this poem as "You Look Out on a World," in 2017, thinking it a fair enough draft. I felt the desire, though, to finish it. This month I have done so. Cheers. . . )

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.

It Is Old Year's Day

And I have fed the birds their seed,
and fed myself some words, just as I ought,
with air at seven points below the naught —
for the thermometer is what I read —
or frost-lines written on the window panes:
lines written with the patience of the cold
upon a year grown blind and stiff and old.
Such lines should write themselves as the year wanes

on Old Year's Day ... how way leads on to way;
how after roads are two, just one goes forth;
whose land this is I think I know — so forth
we go through snowy woods, perhaps to stay,
or find white rest; and so on, and so forth,
writing and reading on this Old Year's Day.

You Look out on a World

You look out on a world now crusted thick
with snow and ice-melt, now the Winter King
sits on the eastern throne and everything
lies coated in his cold. By con-man's trick

he won the scepter; and by subterfuge,
dispatched a knight or two who might have ruled
more fairly. Blathering his rude, unschooled
prejudgements — promising a resort refuge

for the over-taxed well-heeled — he kills
a lady with a torch in flowing gown —
perhaps does else, once she lies stabbed and down —
then smiles, having won this contest of ills.
Pleased that an ursine purse has bought this crown,
a party of pigs gorges on his swills.