Sometimes Winter Gets A Grip
Jill Breckenridge, Member, from The Sometimes Poems
on you like a bulldog shaking a stuffed
Christmas toy, the cotton flying, the
owners chasing him, calling, “Bad dog,
bad dog!” but he’s two steps ahead
of them, and the blizzard doesn’t stop,
white cotton flying, floating down,
coating everything, and it’s March 1st,
and I’ve had way too much snow,
snow, snow. Snow that I welcomed as
a present early in December, but now,
after 80 inches, I’m snow-tired…
Today presents light snow, trying to
sneak by with nearly invisible flakes,
but even light isn’t near enough
to nothing for me…
Snow At Dawn
Stephanie Gordon, Becketwood Member
Dawn approaches from the east
Rooftops become etched in snowy fur
The full heavens have opened
At orchestrated speed and brought winter!
Twelve hours have passed
Since the first snow did its dance
Pine boughs bow, laden with fullness
Overdue moisture has finally arrived.
Tree branches have lost their cloaks of green
Now proudly present a sheet of winter pristine
The world is white outside our window
Peace has come.
To Winter
Ingrid Stocking, Becketwood Member
If winter never returned,
what would we remember?
--the chill on the face,
the bundling,
the slipping,
the sniffling,
the upending,
the motors refusing to start?
But consider: in Greenland, bubbles of ancient air
have been buried in mountainous ice
for 10,000 years.
Now they rise to join with tumbling water
pouring through the base of glaciers
that cover an expanse greater than Lower Manhattan.
The bubbles no longer exist,
except as part of the rising tides.
The glaciers die, even as we do.
They have given us winter,
and protected our cities
from water, weather and time.
If winter never returns, we will recall it
With longing.
A Rhythm To This Place
Linda Back McKay, Becketwood Member, from The Next Best Thing
You feel it in every movement
along the crust of snow.
There is sugar in sunlight,
an iced confection
in the blanched mounds,
decorated with branched
shadows spaced to fit
here. The burrowed place
within yourself is where
you go on skis that make
sounds like zippers on plastic.
Ghoulish ghosting shifts
the day into sunset
when tentacles blacken
on trees. You feel
the heat of your heart.
There is no escape.
Not through brambles,
not through the frozen swamp.
You follow yourself always.
