"wintering" poems
This is the easy time, there is nothing doing.
I have whirled the midwife's extractor,
I have my honey,
Six jars of it,
Six cat's eyes in the wine cellar,
Wintering in a dark without window
At the heart of the house
Next to the last tenant's rancid jam
and the bottles of empty glitters ----
Sir So-and-so's gin.
This is the room I have never been in
This is the room I could never breathe in.
The black bunched in there like a bat,
No light
But the torch and its faint
Chinese yellow on appalling objects ----
Black asininity. Decay.
Possession.
It is they who own me.
Neither cruel nor indifferent,
Only ignorant.
This is the time of hanging on for the bees--the bees
So slow I hardly know them,
Filing like soldiers
To the syrup tin
To make up for the honey I've taken.
Tate and Lyle keeps them going,
The refined snow.
It is Tate and Lyle they live on, instead of flowers.
They take it. The cold sets in.
Now they ball in a mass,
Black
Mind against all that white.
The smile of the snow is white.
It spreads itself out, a mile-long body of Meissen,
Into which, on warm days,
They can only carry their dead.
The bees are all women,
Maids and the long royal lady.
They have got rid of the men,
The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors.
Winter is for women ----
The woman, still at her knitting,
At the cradle of Spanis walnut,
Her body a bulb in the cold and too dumb to think.
Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas
Succeed in banking their fires
To enter another year?
What will they taste of, the Christmas roses?
The bees are flying. They taste the spring.
40.8k
My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.
Some day I'll join him right there,
but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.
Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with ***
No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.
Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea's movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean's spray.
Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.
There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.
So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.
17.7k
The day you died I went into the dirt,
Into the lightless hibernaculum
Where bees, striped black and gold, sleep out the blizzard
Like hieratic stones, and the ground is hard.
It was good for twenty years, that wintering --
As if you never existed, as if I came
God-fathered into the world from my mother's belly:
Her wide bed wore the stain of divinity.
I had nothing to do with guilt or anything
When I wormed back under my mother's heart.
Small as a doll in my dress of innocence
I lay dreaming your epic, image by image.
Nobody died or withered on that stage.
Everything took place in a durable whiteness.
The day I woke, I woke on Churchyard Hill.
I found your name, I found your bones and all
Enlisted in a cramped necropolis
your speckled stone skewed by an iron fence.
In this charity ward, this poorhouse, where the dead
Crowd foot to foot, head to head, no flower
Breaks the soil. This is Azalea path.
A field of burdock opens to the south.
Six feet of yellow gravel cover you.
The artificial red sage does not stir
In the basket of plastic evergreens they put
At the headstone next to yours, nor does it rot,
Although the rains dissolve a ****** dye:
The ersatz petals drip, and they drip red.
Another kind of redness bothers me:
The day your slack sail drank my sister's breath
The flat sea purpled like that evil cloth
My mother unrolled at your last homecoming.
I borrow the silts of an old tragedy.
The truth is, one late October, at my birth-cry
A scorpion stung its head, an ill-starred thing;
My mother dreamed you face down in the sea.
The stony actors poise and pause for breath.
I brought my love to bear, and then you died.
It was the gangrene ate you to the bone
My mother said: you died like any man.
How shall I age into that state of mind?
I am the ghost of an infamous suicide,
My own blue razor rusting at my throat.
O pardon the one who knocks for pardon at
Your gate, father -- your hound-bitch, daughter, friend.
It was my love that did us both to death.
6.6k
Upon the arboreal dozed and limb,
Extended coccyx serpentine loose,
Throne of inspection, tenet and dumb
Stillness hunts akin stealthy Mongoose;
Except for the natal locomotive
Soft deep sufficiently immense purr
Emanating from some industry; effective
In the cover of the thick supple fur.
The lord of his unconquered empire,
Thrives on flesh and quenches on milk,
Wintering unperturbed reading the fire
That flickers, gleaming his bed of silk.
Ever landing on appendage quadruple
Acrobatic athlete not soiling once his back
Consummating in strict concealment marble
Couch of perpetual indulgence buried black.
Jun 23, 2012
Jun 23, 2012 at 5:35 AM UTC
Then I was sealed, and like the wintering tree
I stood me locked upon a summer core;
Living, had died a death, and asked no more.
And I lived then, but as enduringly,
And my heart beat, but only as to be.
Ill weathers well, hail, gust and cold I bore,
I held my life as hid, at root, in store:
Thus I lived then, till this air breathed on me.
Till this kind air breathed kindness everywhere,
There where my times had left me I would stay.
Then I was staunch, I knew nor yes nor no;
But now the wishful leaves have thronged the air.
My every leaf leans forth upon the day;
Alas, kind element! which comes to go.
2.1k
Upon the arboreal dozed and limb,
Extended coccyx serpentine loose,
Throne of inspection, tenet and dumb
Stillness hunts akin stealthy Mongoose;
Except for the natal locomotive
Soft deep sufficiently immense purr
Emanating from some industry; effective
In the cover of the thick supple fur.
The lord of his unconquered empire,
Thrives on flesh and quenches on milk,
Wintering unperturbed reading the fire
That flickers, gleaming his bed of silk.
Ever landing on appendage quadruple
Acrobatic athlete not soiling once his back
Consummating in strict concealment marble
Couch of perpetual indulgence buried black
Feb 13, 2012
Feb 13, 2012 at 6:46 AM UTC
What is the flower that blooms each year
In flowerless days,
Making a little blaze
On the bleak earth, giving my heart some cheer?
Harsh the sky and hard the ground
When the Christmas rose is found.
Look! Its white star, low on earth,
Rays a vision of rebirth.
Who is the child that's born each year -
His bedding, straw:
His grace, enough to thaw
My wintering life, and melt a world's despair?
Harsh the sky and hard the earth
When the Christmas child comes forth.
Look! Around a stable throne
Beasts and wise men are at one.
What men are we that, year on year,
We Herod-wise
In our cold wits devise
A death of innocents, a rule of fear?
Hushed your earth, full-starred your sky
For a new nativity:
Be born in us, relieve our plight,
Christmas child, you rose of light!
by Cecil Day-Lewis, from " A Poet for Every Day of The Year"
Dec 24, 2023
Dec 24, 2023 at 6:38 AM UTC
A chill wind
prepares the land for sleep
snow-weighted clouds
brush golden-stubbled wheat fields
and bare clotted earth
laid out in heirloom patchwork
stitched from lean and bountiful years.
Poplar trees
arranged in perfectly
contoured lines
resist enforced conformity
their flaming arms
reach for each other
tangle and entwine.
Here,
good souls touch down
like wind-blown seeds
from distant lands
of sunlit love
fading purple twilight
and midnight blackness
gently settling
in fertile, protected hollows
where possibilities rest
and winter-over
awaiting the time to wake
and begin anew.
Oct 26, 2015
Oct 26, 2015 at 11:40 AM UTC
Yawns sleepy looks around interesting eyes blinks a few seconds falls out of bed hitting the floor walks out of room touches walls in the darkness seeing shadows dancing along.
The walls and faded lights they change a deeper abyssal black falls into the dusty cold floor creating a shadow of form of myself middle was a soul so scared so sad walks closer to the shadow touches the heart the rest of shadow form goes into the layers of the heart covered.
In black ink holding the black ink heart walks to a table and lays the ink heart on the table pressing two fingers on the ink heart more black ink comes out of the heart covering my fingers in shock sensing the sadness within pulsing ink vessel's.
As dark blue mist crackling around my burned body falls on the ground the ink heart falls. On the ground beating fast the ink heart starts forming a new body deep inside inner souls pass the scar's on the walls of the ink heart finding a girl covered in ink blacken crown on top her head.
My dark red flowing ghost like self turns and floating near her very closer to her and picks her up hugs her tightly kiss's her black ashes lips softly.
My soul self inside her body the ink shadow begin to glow bright scarlet red she smiles and jumping for joy singing wintering songs.
Feb 3, 2016
Feb 3, 2016 at 9:22 PM UTC
The time of the shining of
Wind-summered grasses, has passed,
-To the lark-breast mottle-
The harvested skin of the
Senescent land
The candle-snatch gutter of
Hurrying wing sees
The last of the coin
That was minted in thatches
Of deepwood
Of latticing bramble
Of crumbling eve.
The mourn of the Moorland
Has feathered a will
With the clot of the Ash,
Where a heather of cinnabar
Freckles the splash of
a simmering tarn
As gravelling Easterlies
Peel the cling of
The verdigris fades,
Some twilight of sepia
Musters the pastel
of Wintering calm.
May 25, 2016
May 25, 2016 at 11:08 AM UTC
AWAKEN!
To truth, sigh
blinding focused
edgy path light
to left, to right, to left
left no more...
Heart emanating..
radiating to a fallows
becoming Anew...
fructifier-world
renew the ground's
'Ge'
In the Sea we travail,
the people, toil tire
weakened in arms; descending
orange, pink, purple
Gasp!
Into Deep....
Wintering slopes of sadness.....
Feb 22, 2017
Feb 22, 2017 at 12:18 AM UTC
These wyrms
Stand shorter than placing
Feet.
Her oaken hair bristles
With autumn's hues
And conker cues.
Founding flickers of
Bloodwine tears speaking
Avalanche glances.
We are wintering clouds
Conjoining summer strangers.
Doting flares; icicle years.
Finding you
A ghost on all their faces.
Sep 17, 2014
Sep 17, 2014 at 6:03 PM UTC
*An eyewitness once recited
His bone-chilling account
Of his tightrope walk to Death
How he managed to return
Was, and remains, impossible to say
But his frightening story resonates*
"There I stood on my toes,
On an intermediate point teetering
Between the idyllic salvation
Of Heaven
And the macabre derangement
Hell promises
Lose your balance
And the wayfarer finds himself
Succumbing to the merciless
Pull of the underworld
Condemning him to eternal
Suffering
The scanty few who
Travel across the rope
Unscathed,
undaunted and unfazed
Indulge in the reward
Of the Holy Father's deliverance
And so I stood on the rope,
Its rough frays tickling my soles, I,
Precariously perched on the border
Of Life, Death,
Of Salvation and Damnation
Too overcome with fear to advance forward
I whispered a few syllables,
The dulcet notes rollicked up to
A Saviour above
Omniscient one who knew
The best path for my wintering fate
In a haze of bewilderment I awoke"
Apr 5, 2014
Apr 5, 2014 at 1:52 PM UTC
Burn me with your cold star
Singe my wings
if you would keep me
from your lonesome
turn me away
and i'll forgive you
every-time i return
to claim you for mine
and lovingly watch you burn
in Hell
just like you want me too
i'll see through you and say those things
that twist you hateful, and misshape
the way you live...
for nothing
but think it would **** you
to need someone
and then you'll get what you really want
when you let me
ravage you deeply
with your devils taking photographs
of perfect love
you wont be happy until your utter abandon
finds Hope
i'll never tell you how to think of your self as worthless
and i won't let you lie
saving you all that time to spend in truth
more alive with a fire
fed by the Truth
till if rages
scorching the stupid worlds you believed in
before me
before i listened to your sins
i passed you a note in class and the teacher caught me
and had me mad
to stand ahead of the class
and read aloud the note
and i did so
with my demons taking photographs
of one happy boy, happy to meet you
projecting to the back of the room
and out of blue
start to
sing !
Aug 5, 2013
Aug 5, 2013 at 8:26 PM UTC
In my working days world,
Outside little birdies do swirl,
With wings and songs saying,
Wee birds in trees are playing,
But my blue drab or grey suit,
That chains me to my roots,
With only windows to imagine
A world so colourful, tangible,
Is shroud, only wrap of clothes,
Yet little birds, so downy robed,
And within my comely, demise,
See how brightly birdies do fly,
As I shudder, muted, wintering,
O how wee birdies can sing.
Nov 18, 2014
Nov 18, 2014 at 3:59 PM UTC
In my working days world,
Outside little birdies do swirl,
With wings and songs saying,
Wee birds in trees are playing,
But my blue drab or grey suit,
That chains me to my roots,
With only windows to imagine
A world so colourful, tangible,
Is shroud, only wrap of clothes,
Yet little birds, so downy robed,
And within my comely, demise,
See how brightly birdies do fly,
As I shudder, muted, wintering,
O how wee birdies can sing.
Oct 2, 2014
Oct 2, 2014 at 4:51 PM UTC
ZAZEN
As the pale light of dawn
bleeds through the shōji
we eat a thin gruel
of rice with a pickled plum
from black lacquered bowls
the wind blows cold
we hear the lonesome cries
of wintering gulls
as a temple bell resounds
and a train rattles by
a monk in an indigo robe
strikes a meditator's shoulders
with a stick of cherry wood
fiercely repeatedly
until it snaps!
Dec 11, 2014
Dec 11, 2014 at 2:03 AM UTC
Bro en Intro K
(Universe this in) walked ever has that
being beautiful most the into
turned you’ve years these after
and you in beauty see me lets
change your obvious yet enough is
just and happen never could it
Allusion City, Warm Embrace-Completely Cold:
a taste of warm embrace through a nothing
a mirror showing a wintering copy
of a man who once a King
or perhaps a King who was once a boy
whatever the case may be you can see
a spark throughout the ages of the Universe
would reflect a man throughout a personal sense
and by a flowing river a woman waits quietly
she walks up and greets him like a brother
yet loves him entirely
hopefully he would let her in
but fear could stop him from understanding
(how couldn’t we see this what should be)
what has become of you and I if such a wish was to be
destroyed and then it would be burned with a passion
only able to create a wasteland suburbia(lit on fire by the stars)
(i’mgoingtofloataway i’mgoingtofloatawayi’mgoingtofloataway I’mgoingtofloataway)
into the shades and mirrors you look at me
please care if I become a flower after
finally realizing that I was perfect-
perfect enough to turn the river red
the angels drink from such a river
selling me my only light to guide my way
a dream in its self a reality
a reality of sense and celebration
look how the moon turns over on its side
it lets me see it move about the sky like a shooting star
much too fast to recollect
and if I were to die I would destroy the Universe
but it’s the morning and the morning is love, my dear
let us not sit here by the blue river
wishing the days would slow down
because we know that it could never happen
and before I would ever float away I’ll smash my reflection
and mix the pieces with your Reflection in the river
and it would break down into beautiful words that come out
of the mouths of poets who read their work to crowds
because you are the echo into reality, and nature
and
I
understand
that
it could never happen and just
is enough yet obvious your change
let’s me see beauty in you and
after all these years you’ve turned
into the most beautiful being
that has ever walked (in the Universe)
Apr 7, 2013
Apr 7, 2013 at 12:45 PM UTC
(Sonnet)
In my working days world,
Outside little birdies do swirl,
With wings and songs saying,
Wee birds in trees are playing,
But my blue drab or grey suit,
That chains me to my roots,
With only windows to imagine
A world so colourful, tangible,
Is shroud, only wrap of clothes,
Yet little birds, so downy robed,
And within my comely, demise,
See how brightly birdies do fly,
As I shudder, muted, wintering,
O how wee birdies can sing.
Apr 20, 2015
Apr 20, 2015 at 1:17 PM UTC
the darkened days comfort enveloping blankets
comes around and around again you can count on it
nothing to be seen while you sit invisible blackened
a small table-light shines starry in all the distance
this lovely hiding-out in the wintering world
a root-stock sheltering in the earth-bound soil
what one wonders will spring-up when light returns
and all the creepy-out the winters worst bathe in the Sun
Nov 16, 2014
Nov 16, 2014 at 12:04 PM UTC
I stand because I cannot sit by.
I cannot stand to watch what I look at.
I watch and cannot see what is really there.
See?
I stare at my fantasy without reality. Events unfold and stories told, through
characters merely imagined, to keep that part of me from wintering through everyday
of my life, like a single dried-up and curled-in leaf still attached to a nearly empty tree.
Feel?
That cold creeping closer and in as age frosts my rough-hewn surface, an exterior not
even my mother could love, anymore, anymore. The veins and arteries act as they have
been treated, neglected and broken down, they leak and it is more than, just slightly salty water,
drip, drip...drip.
Hear?
Am I listening to life around me, those voices are more than noises and sounds, they are filled with
words, which echo and rebound that taste of meanings that I must really take care to understand. It is
not all about me, as I am not talking about the voices, the all-important voices, in my head.
Taste? Smell?
Oh Comfort, to find comfort from with-in rather than with-out, when none other will, fill that palate we all share and the air we all share, that I breathe. My blindness has a cure, my insensitivity can be repaired, and my hearing could pass any test, but I must get past the stench of my selfish failures and the textured memories of the stale-dated repast.
Jan 18, 2013
Jan 18, 2013 at 1:46 AM UTC
inside bed
groans i can
hear the rain outside
painfully wintering and
the shifts covers her (the hands between)
sighing erupt palefully spiders incandescent
the notmoon doesn't its light and outside i can hear
the rain(painfully)
i can hear
(and outside)
painfully it's rain
(and wintering)
i can hear.
Jan 11, 2014
Jan 11, 2014 at 4:10 PM UTC
(Sonnet)
In my working days world,
Outside little birdies do swirl,
With wings and songs saying,
Wee birds in trees are playing,
But my blue drab or grey suit,
That chains me to my roots,
With only windows to imagine
A world so colourful, tangible,
Is shroud, only wrap of clothes,
Yet little birds, so downy robed,
And within my comely, demise,
See how brightly birdies do fly,
As I shudder, muted, wintering,
O how wee birdies can sing.
.
May 21, 2018
May 21, 2018 at 1:05 PM UTC
Chill fingered knife,
Ice laser penetrates epidermis,
Cracks the brittle sternum,
Then only gives a tickling touch
There at the porches of the heart;
Aortal rhythms pause and tense,
Resting, moving on...
Pausing, resting, moving on.
Slow wintering this...
Six months past death,
The heart, still beating
After that last breath,
Is mine.
The beating in this winter cold
Rejects fear's hold,
Melts the blade of ice,
Reserves the final breath
Until another day,
Provides me reasons now
To love and to be loved.
So it is that here in winter
I **** my head to hear
A trickling song of melting snow,
A thawing fear, a warming hope.
Seasons come and go, and nights and days
Revolving take each other's place.
Life and death for us still in the web of time
Hold constant power until
Eternity steps in and takes us home.
"Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow,
I will fear no evil, for Thou, Oh Lord, are with me."
---King David
Jan 20, 2013
Jan 20, 2013 at 12:44 PM UTC
Dammed good facts,
today is a surely measurable day.
Set in the common course of human events
from the bottom,
where the world at this altitude,
is wintering, while
from the top we feel the sun, straight on
hot
as Mohave at solstice,
such as I, as we, seeing we live in order
to live
in order to help
eh, hey, hear us near us say, we know
weyekin, ye ken, visionary wisdom wedom
poet singer sayer pre-sent, and representing
words
living in timespace at time's own pace, passing
Dark cold winter, time for inwalled-usness use,
we become the whole room,
sometimes, all eyes on I, the one, in the middle
- there
- being the connection, anhamartia-tic,
coherence
here and there, a web conforms to koinonical
image entonations, owls of common sorts,
and squeeking black lizards, settle in the shade,
to night we go,
onward, to mark the time, watching all the old
knowing proven,
as the sun rises and sets, facts
as measures confirm, solid-ifity convey, say
so it is, con-fide-used knowing, faith,
as we say.
We are the people who know this mystery,
we live in life, as bits of all that ever was,
by now, all that is weighted
significant from first landmarks set in times past.
some, not my we, some see life as a struggle, see
from a salmon's POV, the sense of efforting
is joy,- efforting rejoicing +
this is right, this is how I form the people,
offsprung from war wage slaves,
who **** us,
to hide the stars at night.
Humans in the future shall love water flowing
functionality,
and starry story tellings
un seen in cities since the great white way
attracted the sharks into the tank.
Jun 21, 2022
Jun 21, 2022 at 4:57 PM UTC