The Garden of the Seasons: The Winter King Is in the Skies

 

Slipping By Unnoticed

All the little roofs

All the quiet worlds 

beneath

the fading of the night

All the magic taking place 

overhead

Someone is drawing on 

the heavens

with the paintbox 

of the sun

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's Further

The clock of the seasons 

winds down 

cray-pas, watercolors, pastels, 

pencils with 

those liquid-like paints

We groundlings 

can manage a season 

without color

because the color is in the sky

 First Comes the Gold

Do not ask 'what color 

is the sky?'

It is the color 

it chooses to be

when the sun slices 

its rays so thin, 

the colors slide into view

Those who are more 

accustomed to seeing 

find a place as well 

on the dance cards 

of time

twilight's winter fashions

the unsung songs 

the dances of the animal 

masks, the brilliance 

of lost sunsets

escaping the prison house 

of transitory beasts

Charcoal Blue

Our city

somebody's city

city of mineral kings

abstractions made stone

The birds have fled

the lines are sharp

the sky is smoke

the music gray

The water swallows 

the light

breathes a long story 

in a hidden tongue

 Moving Parts

That someone, 

that invisible hand

who deals out of sight 

of earthlings

to keep things moving

whose sheep are 

the gray ships 

of evening

seamlessly, silently

going somewhere

when there is no "where"

we'll ever see

Terrified

Nothing stays put here

The ineffable is eff-ing

How dull is our light

How certain the dark hands

that wash their fingers 

in our humble water

and conduct their shadows 

across the highways 

we will never see

This Plant 

Has never blossomed

so much white or shown 

such ribs

It births its multitudes

in a nursery of snow

Party Lights

Whatever's going on 

below

a festival of light 

and color

dances, songs, or simply 

too much electronics

It's only a room, a cellar

upstairs the giants are 

singing

Do Not Believe

Everything you hear

Ah, those pale and flimsy 

cottony briefs

wave in a sea of blue

But fires burn on 

a distant continent

an ocean, maybe

with a self-consuming love

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Garden of Verse embraces the Garden of the Seasons: Three Poems in February's Verse-Virtual

We want it lighter: A seasonal message for the mid-winter in a northern climate. I have three poems in the February issue of Verse-Virtual, the poetry journal, and community, I have contributed to regularly since the final month of 2015. All three reflect on seasonal themes belonging to the end of the year. The holidays are behind us, and lots of winter lies still ahead, with vaccination-rendezvouses likely on our minds. Nevertheless these three story-poems look back on the holiday season and the winter solstice.

The poem "Twilight Kingdom" recalls a long-ago period in my life when I explored early winter twilights on the site of a no longer worked farm, with spirits in the air. 

The poem "We Went to Pick the Greens There" remembers a group of long-ago friends making an unconventional Christmas celebration. no family, no children, no parents. 

And the poem "you want it lighter" describes a solstice day expedition to another city to pay a holiday visit our daughter 

I'll post that poem below:  

 

You Want It Lighter 

Solstice Day:

Just wait,

whole seconds more of light coming tomorrow. 

You can see it in the silver-blue water of the harbor

pale with the reminiscence of ice: change is in the air.

We inch our way around the sun,

the suave conjunction of planetary influences

apparent, momentarily,

from a bridge over the Schuylkill River,

until clouds reform

to swallow the moment.

We arrive in the city of Daughterly Love

to find the light charmed into strings of tiny stars,

skilled hands brightening short days with carrot soup,

homegrown basil, morning mimosas

and all those other gifts of practical affection. 

 

For the others see Verse-Virtual