#decembrance

#19 decembrance 2024

decembrance #4 2023

It’s the Season I Often Mistake

Birds for leaves, and leaves for birds. The tawny yellow mulberry leaves are always goldfinches tumbling across the lawn like extreme elation. The last of the maroon crabapple ovates are song sparrows that tremble all at once. And today, just when I could not stand myself any longer, a group of field sparrows, that were actually field sparrows, flew up into the bare branches of the hackberry and I almost collapsed: leaves reattaching themselves to the tree like a strong spell for reversal. What else did I expect? What good is accuracy amidst the perpetual scattering that unspools the world.

decembrance #21 2024

Here it is, the solstice. The longest night of the year has arrived.   Physics and astronomy can explain how and when this moment occurs. But for me it’s about the mystery and the marking of a subtle shift, the feeling of a pause before the increasing daylight clearly begins to shift the balance.

My Crow

A crow flew into the tree outside my window. It was not Ted Hughes’s crow, or Galway’s crow. Or Frost’s, Pasternak’s, or Lorca’s crow. Or one of Homer’s crows, stuffed with gore, after the battle. This was just a crow. That never fit in anywhere in its life, or did anything worth mentioning. It sat there on the branch for a few minutes. Then picked up and flew beautifully out of my life.

#3 decmbrance 2022

December Brightening

I came home late to the broken

porch light fixed— handiwork of an old

love’s new flame.

#1 decembrance 2021

Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light. You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, sending up warm bouquets of air. Even this late the bones of the body shine and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.