"hibernal" poems
When winter's glaze is lifted from the greens,
And cups are freshly cut, and birdies sing,
Triumphantly the stifled golfer preens
In cleats and slacks once more, and checks his swing.
This year, he vows, his head will steady be,
His weight-shift smooth, his grip and stance ideal;
And so they are, until upon the tee
Befall the old contortions of the real.
So, too, the tennis-player, torpid from
Hibernal months of television sports,
Perfects his serve and feels his knees become
Sheer muscle in their unaccustomed shorts.
Right arm relaxed, the left controls the toss,
Which shall be high, so that the racket face
Shall at a certain angle sweep across
The floated sphere with gutty strings--an ace!
The mind's eye sees it all until upon
The courts of life the faulty way we played
In other summers rolls back with the sun.
Hope springs eternally, but spring hopes fade.
5.7k
The Autumn missal has arrived,
A fall reminder of the coming cold,
Strange slanting light to shift the maple
Greens to furious red and gold.
High above the myriad travelers chant adieu,
As on their sky-road paths they sing,
A chorus glorious to southern waters blue
Where winter marshes serve a warm retreat.
A liturgy of highest order drives the world
Beyond the ken of time-old cycles round;
Hibernal instinct now in feral life unfurls:
Flogs squirrels outward on their oak-corn bounds,
Plushes wealth of wolves' warm winter fur,
Hardens bone and antler, deepens feathered down,
Adds harvest fat to beast and fish and fowl,
Drives sap below old Frost's attempt to burrow down.
_________________
Unspoken paen unheard by almost all,
A careless shivering passerby may dread
This ritual changing of the Fall,
But never mind, the liturgy is read,
And Nature safely tucks herself into her wintery bed.
Sep 19, 2013
Sep 19, 2013 at 9:53 AM UTC
dark hair, darker nights
the winter solstice draws us
together again
Feb 8, 2023
Feb 8, 2023 at 2:47 AM UTC
i feel drunk
when reading about drunks
looped
no bracement
i look up from the book
it's 6:45 a.m.
i'm in the hospital cafeteria
nearly time for work
in a stranger
i clock a face
struggling to become a face
publicly
she breakfasts
bent under a hood of hair
(she's not sure what expression
to let be witnessed )
i dodge her glance
overloom
the windows
make a massive jet mirror
reaching the full ballroom height
a shield onto hard darkness
protected from a primal cavity
the patrons are shied in its casting
a smudging forms at its base
the horizon beeking
an easing hint of winters sun
the glow is wanted
but it brings nothing new to its display
still a hibernal wash
i don't hum with these morning frequencies
they can be beautiful
but i pitch sickly
and i suspect
the stranger girl is also no dawn spark either
Feb 24, 2022
Feb 24, 2022 at 11:49 AM UTC
You told me I could fall asleep
Laying on your chest,
The rise
And fall
Of your breathing
Urging me to rest.
The unearthly zephyr sang stridulant verses
Transuding through the window
The hibernal ghost couldn’t touch you or I,
Underneath our lullaby.
Thwack.
Awake.
You wrapped your fingers around my neck
The skin red and raw
You screeched to me, questioned who I was
The only word that escaped was ‘more’
The concavity of where you laid
Was warm under my heavy skull
My thoughts drifted
To the beat of your feet
Silently
Inevitably
Creeping
Away.
The light bled through the pullulating slit
Where you disdained me a final time
You left without knowing you’d left a thing
Call it forgetting.
Theft.
Crime.
Where was this cryptic noise conceived?
I wondered that a while
It was your flesh
Your bones and blood
Your heart and soul
Your child.
Nov 11, 2015
Nov 11, 2015 at 8:07 PM UTC
A sleepy rodent and an arrowed lover
Predict cold winter's tail is nearly past.
The Frost Lizard's cold and lifeless breath
Slithers January and February through,
But cannot muster up the frozen breath
To freeze the hibernal world to death.
We wait the moistening breath of Spring
Inside our hovels, here beneath the blowing snow.
Listening to the heavy moving thighs and trampling claws
Of a dying lizard, moving slow, but forced to go.
Feb 15, 2014
Feb 15, 2014 at 7:44 PM UTC
In the moment, a beginning, when opened,
cage is body. A city, prison. I am blood
in the sinew of labyrinths restored. How it began,
I was gradually introduced. This empire of the city
and I. Careful enough to fit in the chamber of a car,
held hostage by drumming sounds. Body shaken
by multitude music, well-guarded in this secret.
In the moment, a beginning, when pried open,
indicative of story. Body is novel. Moments
punctuate. I am a line that pursues the center.
How it began,
I was quick to expect the finality. This city before
meant nothing to me. Now that I have arrived, I breathe
through stations filled with hibernal faces waiting the train
to commiserate. Questions form a body to converse with.
Answers a momentous day, forthcoming
of something, tremendous with the hubris of forecast:
Today the sun is as shameful as shameful can be,
force-opened the windows for air to bloom. This is intention
of the season. Watching salt slowly descend, I know how to dance
with my sweat. I taste my skin to prove it. What must I be
in the moment, a beginning, when opened? Whose body I long to
cage? With what magnitude do I try to surprise?
What well-guarded perdition I try to relinquish?
May 17, 2016
May 17, 2016 at 11:35 PM UTC
thrifty fat tree rat
hibernal conditions bid
burrow and becalmed
Nov 12, 2019
Nov 12, 2019 at 11:37 AM UTC
Holiday seasons’ snowy glens
Inside the frosted windows, white.
Bundled in warmth of love so tight.
Evening stars above & on Christmas tree.
Rushing in excitement to unwrap and tear free,
Needful youths for things of worth.
Acts of kindness louder than words.
Lovely, daily winter gifts, sharing the world, hibernal.
Dec 6, 2019
Dec 6, 2019 at 4:43 AM UTC