Winter Rose

Always My Winter Rose

These long years, 

Spanning the inexorable pace of this last decade 

I have quested treasure 

In the willing world, and found some,

As other seekers have, all 

Facing in some startle now 

Our own ending time

Considering 

What we take with us

As we move beyond the veil.

Love is love, that’s clear, and 

We’ll take that vast comfort 

Wherever we travel.

Knowing this,

The world smoothes back into 

How we go along. 

The weather across these long lakes

Where I live now

Is mercurial, but I know how to read it

It’s a barometer I learned 

On the plains, as I know you understand, but really, 

Isn’t this the way to

Navigate in the world? 

If one can’t understand the

Shifting winds, the changing skies, the roiling waters

One trusts the ones who do. 

Listening, I write to you and

I wonder when we start returning, 

And when the body

Rich and pulsing 

Flesh and blood, fears and dreams

Starts to turn to face a brighter light?

Even winter rose is beggar to the sky

Where lies the always-open door

For all we know it’s always there

And it’s only God who knows.

For Gretchen 

104 years old this day,

January 25, 2020

I love you with all my heart

Wrexie

January Midi

Are we about to re-start winter now?

This flirting around with temperatures

Strange winds to acknowledge or 

Account for,

A different odd bareness of the 

Trees and fields

I’ve been watching

On geologic time

Although

I’ve been here before,

These green, verdant winters. 

Later, I know, winter comes again

When the snow flies 

I don’t think about whether

Or not I understand

How spring, 

And as days pass in the slowness

Time acquires

I go along

Carrying with me 

Peace enough, and  

Wondering if I should

Pause 

Into being

This homeostasis,

My own blooming

I think I meant to say 

Myself

Fearing Parched

One night in 

A torrent of words

I was trying to find

An essence and found 

No essence 

Except the search

And my 

Trying to

Ignite in to light

The darkened spaces

For the dawning.

After all that,

Nothing is the same, 

Although nothing changes.

In the chaos of my life

Sometimes a beacon glistens

It has before

Though the lumen 

Does not come often, and is 

Often faint, 

But my rays, my synesthesia,

All the whos I am 

Now mix in with 

This new chord of light

I carry one afternoon,

Pale bronze against 

Gentle disappearing mountain,

Alive as western miles, 

Mountain miles, 

Sweep of plains miles

All spooled into vast,

Whole for you miles. 

The clock stops one beat

Mid-motion

Homeostasis. 

Early mid-December ‘19

Sent from my iPhone