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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.
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.
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-*****, daughter, friend.
It was my love that did us both to death.
Denel Kessler Oct 2015
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.
Written for my mother during a major transition in her life.
Monika Feb 2019
was it for the lichens
growing on my pleached
entrails that you came,

scavenging like caribou
on pilgrimage to the
wintering ground?
wish i didn't still want her.
Third Eye Candy Aug 2013
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 !
Robert Ronnow Feb 2023
There are actual people
half woman half man
running mornings and
dream people in movies
half language half light.
Tomorrow is John’s funeral.

* * *

This is my minute
my moment
Oops, gone!

Anything can happen
if you don’t resist
Resist!

* * *

But who am I? You think bullets won’t
****? I’m the guy they put before a
wall and shoot then eat lunch.

* * *

Long as yr livin
yr havin that dream in
which yr killin the villains
w/o even needin a weapon.

* * *

If it was fun, they wouldn't call it work,
but it is fun. It's what we do, a bird
sings, dogs bark. We work. Sing bark work.
Honey, put on your shorts, it's gonna be 90 today.

* * *

How right is the rabbi!
"What a good and bright world this is if we do not lose our hearts to it,
But what a dark world if we do!"

* * *

We saw a barred owl
camouflaged in winter branches.
Bird of death (in myth), hunts down the dark,
floats to a farther tree, turns its back, and naps.

* * *

The sadness of summer, the silence of winter
you can’t sum it up in one more metaphor.
So don’t complain about the epoch you live in.
Go to Big Hidden Lake and jump in!

* * *

Down to negative calories, in deep snow
we find soft wintering rose hips, gobble them down.
First time for me a wild edible made a difference,
not just a delicacy. Then we snowshoe out.

* * *

Spring morning
flycatchers, jays, thrushes, a woodpecker’s loony cry.
A toilet flushes.

* * *

Zach
awoke from a scary dream
I kissed him back to bed

He asked
are all the doors locked?
I said yes knowing they would not hold

* * *

The republic may expire
but birds go on traveling, singing
in their best attire.

* * *

My plump cashier
has a new love.
Her skin is clear
and her line moves.

* * *

Desafinado means slightly out of tune which is not a problem.
It’s a fortunate condition. Zach just called from school sounding clear
and happy to say there’s floor hockey this afternoon. For me, another       cold,
slow Spring. How lucky!

* * *

At basketball I was reminded
the better players in their private moments
think on the ultimate reward. Perfect rest.

* * *

You come in our backyard, we go in yours.
That about sums it up. Assuming there are definable, accepted backyards.
Suppose it’s all one backyard and time is all one sheet of ice?

* * *

My son Zach said as a toddler he liked the old house
and he’s having a good time now at the new house.
We were lying together in the window seat passing the early morning       time,
late September and happy as I was I thought what’s running out is time.

* * *

The young women’s bodies were awesome. I appreciated
the couple of Muslim women who kept their bodies
covered. That was easier on an old man’s eyes.

Not that I wanted to change the American girls’ ways.
They seemed comfortable wearing underwear outdoors
and unaware, more or less, of the longing it provoked.

* * *

To invade a clean house
searching for weapons or insurgents, I agree
with the enemy, that is a sacrilege.
Not that I accept their god, and there could be,
hiding, a mouse.

* * *

I tell my sons
If some man tries to pull you into his car, fight
kick bite yell run punch curse scratch knife
make him **** you right there in the street
use your feet your fear your hate.

* * *

If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.
—Mario Andretti

* * *

The river in its muddy symmetry
high water mark in Spring
is a god to me
in a way that I can be to a dog while thinking
or the sky is to the hanging apple.

* * *

A day, a new day, starts at 5:00.
Earlier than that it’s still yesterday,
the rags and dreams, the sweat and worry, the *** and laughter
of that day. The alcohol and aspirin, the sunset and machinery, the dinner       and toothache
of that day. The germs and friends, the sports and editorial, the gleam and
      dullness
of that day.

* * *

The key to success is cross out, delete, compress,
rub out, expunge, black out scratch out blot out,
censor, crop, shorten and silence.
Clip, cut, erase and eradicate.
Hate everything you write.

* * *

I will be saved
and spanked too.

* * *

Phil is on a movie diet. Bad movies in which the logic switch is turned off. Jumps from scene to scene like a cat.
Most ******* is hilariously obscene. Genitals like little animals. Snowplows hit potholes sending up sparks.

* * *

Make way for a future that’s irresistible!
Dust. Rest. Mist. Rust.
One day follows another until the last day.
And on that day, there will be weather.

* * *

Driving in traffic
80 mph, 80 y/o.
Turkey vultures shrug shoulders.

* * *

When an archangel
flies into your windshield
sing cuckoo!
Stanley Mungai Jun 2012
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.
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.
Stanley Mungai Feb 2012
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
Duane Kline Jun 2018
I endure
the hot days of summer
Just to keep the thought
of those island winter breezes
Blowing in on us
Alive in my heart.

To sit on a sand-littered porch,
To lie on a hammock
with my books
pen and ink
Swept back and forth
by ocean breeze
And your voice
Singing Hymns
At our slightly
Out of tune
Piano.
betterdays Jul 2014
this is the time
of the year,
when the cold
asserts itself
and the near naked,
little blucat,
makes cocoons and nests,
under any towel,
jumper or rugs, left lying about.

we have learnt,
to pat the cushions on the couch,
to see if they meow....
and check the chimney,
before lighting, a new fire...

for if the days are grey
and bleak.....

gus will find warmth, somewhere, somehow.....

i once got all the way
to work....
and worked till lunchtime,
when in the comfort of my office.
...i opened up my, satchel
to find a little,
blue-grey kitten-cat,
curled up, around my thermos flask, of chicken noodle soup....
he was, soundly asleep,
i may add.
.
he will not be dressed
for this cold weather, squirming,out of coats
and specially knitted sweaters....

but will find places,
to nest and ride out
the cold snap.
only coming out....
when the fire has warmed the air...
or for furtive and hurried trips to dinner bowl
and litter tray...
before snuggling,
back into the cocoon
he has created.
PK Wakefield Jan 2014
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.
Francesca Rose May 2020
Love can come in four different forms, almost akin to the seasons. It is fluid, and can intertwine with the other seasons, but never truly sits still. Love is never constant, and it fades as quickly as the cooling kiss of a summer breeze.

Springtime love is electric, a bitter hour in which it seems that this love is all that matters. It is all encompassing, and galvanises you into action. To feel Springtime love is to feel alive, after days and weeks and months of quiet. It is the cheer of a crowd, the press of bodies and the pounding in your ears. Springtime love is exciting and new, no matter how many springs you've seen before.

Summertime love is a lazy creek, trickling slowly across the sun scorched rocks of a small waterfall. It is the curling vapour drifting up from the surface of the water, and the sweet lemon in a glass of lemonade. Summertime love is warmth and honey, and its cloying grip is both calming water and slow-burning flame.

Autumnal love is passionate, sour and fast, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it flash of clarity among the Indian summers and oncoming storms. It is the rain bearing down on a windowpane, morose and ferocious, and it is breathtaking. Autumnal love seems like the truest of the four, the kind of pain that one who is in love craves like nothing else. Autumnal love is hopeless, beautiful fury.

Wintering love is not kind, or violent, or sweet. It is the salt on the foam of a crashing wave, a lukewarm coffee abandoned overnight, the eye of the storm you can never escape. Wintering love is acceptance, and sorrow, and blessed silence, and only in winter do the other seasons of love look like a lie. Wintering love is regret, and terrified of when spring arrives once more.

Every time you fall in love, you live the days from spring to winter. Some love-years last days, and others last centuries, ages, eons, until even the sands of time forget that snow or rain ever fell there. The beautiful thing about humans, I find, is that even after a thousand winters, a human can be willing to sacrifice everything for one more spring.
undefined Dec 2023
Payday.

I feel broken and beaten down and antisocial. I wander aimlessly through Walmart trying to find snacks for lunches to pack. I make my way from cookies and crackers to liquor turn left , electronics, uninterested. I find myself looking at luggage and backpacks, and then into the camping section.  Grab some paracord, seems like I always need that. A pocket knife, only five bucks. Then, I'm looking at sleeping bags...

I'm lost.

Lost and knowing I'm lost, in a world of normalcy that doesn't suit me. I leave the grocery store with a bag of granola, because I only know how to pack for hiking and train rides.

Two more months of harvest left.
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 ******* 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.
irinia Dec 2023
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"
Merry Chirtmas for all of you celebrating, peace for all!
A W Bullen May 2016
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-****** 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.
After a day birding in Brecon with a friend, I wrote a verse of the experience  ( Ravens were there -again!- you have to ****** love those critters, though!), at the time , it was late summer, but  the change was already upon the Uplands. The insidious fading of leaf and grass, the brittle petals of wind-burnt flower, all murmours and rumour of the levelling cold to come.
Sophia Aug 2020
The wintering started on a dark December eve; slowly and silently,
it numbed me through the window panes.

I dove off into the wine dark sea.
As cold as death, as cold as resignation.

The sickle moon smiled placidly down as I melted into sea foam.
L T Winter Sep 2014
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.
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.....
Yours et cetera Apr 2014
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"
So my wayward thoughts somehow detoured to the sensation of death
Seán Mac Falls Nov 2014
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.
Seán Mac Falls Oct 2014
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.
Jiko-san Dec 2014
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!
Sayer Apr 2013
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)
An older poem.
Seán Mac Falls Apr 2015
(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.
nivek Nov 2014
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
Ottar Jan 2013
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.
This is about the lethargy.  It may seem harsh to some.
Don Bouchard Jan 2013
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
Seán Mac Falls May 2018
(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.
.
Ken Pepiton Jun 2022
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.
Remove not the old landmarks,
find the way where good is, and walk therein, to when
you get there you know it for all it was.
i went to see the water,
estuary edge to the road,
water blind. there were signs.

sheep sheltered under rock.

glad i saw the old houses,
wintering, wood smoked,
perfumed. glad i smelled
the oak burning, turning

the corner, saw the flood,
the road swimming, so
returned back home.

lit the fire.

i am glad i went.

they have reserved the book for me.

sbm

— The End —