Welcoming Winter: Poems and a Pic for January

  

I have three poems in the January issue of Verse-Virtual., the online poetry journal for which I am a very regular contributor: three every month.

This month's contributions include one on the seasons, "Welcome to Winter." One on a harrowing encounter: "The Blind Guy." And One on the need human beings have for one another, titled "Shepherd Me."

Here's

Welcome to Winter

Cover your body with white fat 
Grow hair on your neck, the backs of your hands,
ankles, spleen
Smother your skin with the oil of musk,
so effective for reducing unnecessary contact
     with others of your own failing species
Cultivate aging machines
They laugh in the face of long-range forecasts
They spit in the wind of progress
They resist as a point of pride

And turn your old car into a dogsled
drawn by the neighborhood delinquents
who refuse to attend those academies of unpleasant demands
offering the acres of the despondency the elders call ‘facts’

Welcome, deep season! 
Scrub your windy teeth on the tall and prickly points 
of Father Pine, the always acerbic Arborvitae,
and expel your mouth rinse on the gleaming ice follies of 

    yesterday’s lacy network of river and streams
converted now into an arterial network of
    just plain freaking cold

Let the ice steam for all comers!
You steam, we all scream
I swallow my fear in huge gulps of repentance
     for all that summer love
Embrace me, icicle mother, and all your greenie beaming children
waving frozen wings of beautiful death

To read my other poems, and those of 62 other poems contributing this month, see

Verse-Virtual

https://verse-virtual.org/2023/January/knox-robert-2023-january.html