Country Stars

An urbanized sky is a sorry thing, with barely a handful of dim and dreary stars. Travel to the country, however, and you will find a treasure trove of brilliant and luminous constellations. It is easy to forget the beauty of God's creation when you spend your life trapped in the hazy, cement walls of a city, but a quick trip to the wilderness will remind you, in an instant, of the inestimable vastness of the universe.


Country Stars

The stars of the city are pale and grey,
a glimmer of heavenly cheer,
awoken to shutter the elderly day
in shadow. This stale career

is all that persists of the glorious crown
that once superseded the earth,
as timid ascension and settling down
deposits the stars in their berth.

But travel a little beyond the divide
that severs the city and wood,
where rivers run deep and horizons are wide
and wild, and then if you should

look up on a cloudless and equable night,
the stars that you see overhead
will glory the sky in a radiant light
that rouses the living and dead.

The Festival of the Last Minute

Another year come and gone; another fifty-two poems on the (metaphorical) page. This next shall bring big changes for me - momentous, earth-shaking changes - but this poetry blog, read or unread, will steadily chug along. I can only hope that it brings you as much joy as it does me. God bless and merry Christmas.


The Festival of the Last Minute

With Christmas close upon us and the rush
of shopping, should it come as a surprise
that charity is buried in a crush
of acquisition. How we idolize

and gather, like a flock of silly sheep,
and straightaway surrender every scrap
of will and wit and intellect we keep
to toe the latest trend. This honeyed trap

entices both the plebeian and prince.
What better way to show your tender care
than with a gift? How better to convince
of love than by the offerings you bear?

But as for me, I'll spend the eve in rest
and seek to be an honest Christmas guest.

Worth

I am tired and this poem is quite nearly late. Thank goodness for Christmas break. May your last week of Advent be blessed.


Worth

I had a little speck of worth
within me from the start,
established in the fallow earth
that occupied my heart,

but now that heart has been rebuilt
into a fertile bed
and all the worth that used to wilt
is blooming overhead.

Soon

Can it be that time is passing so quickly? Sometimes, the seconds are an eternity, but other times, weeks hardly seem a sufficient measure. I can't say I mind the latter state, so long as things slow down come May.


Soon

When winter eases and the willing earth
awakens to the legacy of snow,
when shoots are swelling for a sudden birth
and all the land is fit to overflow

with liveliness, as just as sure as we
are set to sow our happiness, a song
is on our tongues, a wild reverie.
Though we are here, we shall not linger long,

when longing couples liberty to pain
and makes the hours agony to bear.
Our servitude is certain to be gain,
our mingling, a joyful affair.

For on the day we join soul to soul,
we make our native deficit a whole.

Sleep

How pleasant it is to burrow under the heavy weight of blankets, when the temperature and sun are sinking fast. The only grief of sleep is how quickly it passes, and the time for rising in the chill morning air is upon us as, day and night, we play the sorry Persephone.


Sleep

The night approaches, dim and deep and dark,
an inky chill that clambers at my toes.
That old December sky is bare and stark
and stippled with the stars. I do suppose

I'll wander off to bed, and to my dreams;
they warm me, and the burly blankets, too,
as other warmth unravels at the seams
and slips away. How pleasant to pursue

my bounding, old bellwether and his flock,
who number out the enterprise of sleep
as surely as a counterweighted clock.
Within my waking mind, the moments creep,

but, sure and sweet, a somnolence takes hold
and, sooner than I know, the night is old.

Wet Winter

Winter in the Midwest is a quakingly cold, arctic affair. The snow piles up in huge, tar-black mounds in the streets and parking lots, and the daily low temperature readings are rendered entirely void by harsh and constant windchill. For all its severity, however, those winters are easy to bear. Firstly, there are no fluctuations. When winter comes, it is to stay, and for six months, the land is locked in comfortable hibernation. When things finally do begin to warm towards that fabled 0° C mark, it is not uncommon to see the braver residents wandering around in shorts and tee-shirts. Secondly, and more importantly, it is not, in the end, utter cold that makes winter uncomfortable, but, rather, the pervading damp of a temperate chill. When the water settles on your skin and coats your car with ice and works its way into every crack and crevice, where it can quietly wick away all heat, that is when winter is truly painful. For all that, though, it is still a stunningly beautiful time of year.


Wet Winter

It isn't the chill or the chafe of the air
on a frigid and blustery day
or the ice as it glazes and kindles a glare
every morning that keeps me at bay;

I can suffer the frost through the swirling snow
and the nip and the grippe and the squall,
for the roar of the winter, all buffet and blow,
is an impotent rallying call.

No, the heart of the hardship, the bestial hold,
is that treacherous creep of the damp;
it invests every breath with a waterlogged cold,
every move with a crippling clamp,

as it burrows through fleece to the flesh and the bone,
not a nerve to be spurned in its spite.
I could weather the winter if left all alone,
but the damp will endure tonight.

Itinerancy

The time for uprooting old foundations is fast approaching. Of the things that must go, I will miss the juniper and wisteria most of all. They've done well for themselves, and it's a terrible pity to see their slow and steady progress so swiftly concluded. What must be, must be, I suppose, but I dream of the day I can establish a plant and watch it grow for decades to come.


Itinerancy

Our barrel tree has barely made a man
in height; his roots have labored for the earth
forlornly, hindered by an iron girth
and sentenced, just as soon as they began

descending, to terminated lot.
We'll turn him out, all sod and sorry dirt
and limbs askew. The effort we exert
to extricate his skeleton is not

inordinate for what it took to bed
his youthfulness so many years ago;
so many years of sun and bitter snow,
and, through it all, he kept a noble head.

But now, we move our transitory home;
no rooted tree was ever meant to roam.