Sunday, March 14, 2021

poem

 Winter Requiem

Dying days of light snow,

Giant flakes fluttering down like ashes.

No one ever mourns the end of winter.

The sputterings of spring in early March elicit

Eager hope rather than sad remembrances

Of frozen days of the dark solstice.


Let us acknowledge this morning of silence

To honor the passing of the frigid balm.

We ought to thank it

For its blanketing solace,

For its unexpectant calm,

For the space that opens

Up when it freezes

And all the water expands 

To become the ice for our bruises

And the snow to soothe our open wounds.


The end of summer evokes the melancholy 

Last days by the sea shore,

The way the waves lap at your toes

Like dogs who don’t want you to go.

Even the end of autumn stings

When all the trees finally go bare,

When the Northern winds

Whistle and prick like steel pins.


It’s not a fait accompli 

That winter doesn’t get a proper burial;

First snow, the frozen pond

The festive holiday lights.

There’s plenty to miss.

But it lasts so, so long.

One begins to doubt if the living

Will ever really rise from the dead.

The dark truth of it  

Wears one down.


But sadness is always more true than happiness.

Some of us are more alive in sorrow,

In the empty handedness of total loss.

The string of the balloon slipping

From my 3 year old girl’s fingertips,

Me loving my dad most after

He got in the car and drove away.

The way the wind

Ridges the waters of the pond

Like a flock of starlings

Murmurating in rhythmic random whooshes.

But you look to the sky

And there’s nothing there;

No flock, no birds, just the vast grayness.

The reflection is nothing but the wind 

Which is the nothing that reveals the thing not there.  


Goodbye my old friend.

The world cannot bear to remain so silent and still.

It is time to bloom once again.


3/14/21

1 comment:

maliesmom said...

Love it. Glad you were there when I needed someone...but obviously talented well beyond your medical skills....sending hugs.