WinterTide: 16 Days by Karen Pierce Gonzalez

 

WinterTide: 16 Days

 

 

 

Early Winter / Lattice / Of Cold

 

 

poetry and photographs

Karen Pierce Gonzalez

 

 

 

 

Winter solstice

 

easy

on our eyes

 

unburrows

our longing

for miracles and cures

 

 

 

 

In winter’s inky dark

 

away from rivulets of light

duck-billed, beaver-tailed

Platypus hatchlings

rough and tumble

against mineral veined walls -

clumps of mud banked earth

collapse behind them.

 

 

 

 

 

As the story goes

Before bedding

into winter sleep

Bear gathers up

broken branches

for a fire.

 

Rubs them

between paws

to light up

the darkened forest

of our humanity.

 

 

 

 

Northern Lights

 

playful red foxes,

tails afire

 

spill out of dens

chase streaks of starlight

across iced polar pools of January

 

 

 

 

 

January skyfall

 

Moon stars snowflake

on rooftops we tiptoe across-

angel-blue powder

at our feet.

 

 

  

 

 

 

Waiting  

   

February winds

wrap the well
rimmed with white frost.

Dim moonlight softens

my longing for lilac;

summer scent so far away.

 

Boundless cold night

crawls up heaven’s hem.

Its icy lace

covers mountain passes.

 

 

 

 

 

snow wind 

 

pushes crystal flakes

over east mountain

 

icicles

on craggy edges

poke holes in the sky

 

 

 

 

Garden spirits

 

I am quite sure a garden doesn’t like to be … covered in dust sheets…

during winter. Beverly Nichols, Down the Garden Path (1931)

 

 

Not a graveyard for last year’s greens,

beetle remains, and dried promise pods,

it is a bit of bordered earth

able to nourish newly planted bulbs –

garlic, onion, and chives. Pungent,

dangling root fumes, inhaled by mycelia’s

fingerly sprawl under the fence to a neighbor’s yard.

 

There underground shoots gather

together, tunnel below the street.

Once on the other side, they fertilize and seed

the plot of the old man in a wheelchair.

Staring out his front room window

he can no longer tend his patch

of ground; once lovingly turned by hand.

 

After that, the cold season garden

dares us to explain—if we can—

what it means to be frozen at heart

during this, the deepest time of year,

for which spring gardens

are only just tendrils.

 

  

 

 

 

 

Winter’s maiden

 

winds her way

through your favorite Redbud

            branches bare; leaves almost forgotten,

she presses their fallen stipular spines

into rain-soaked mud

            mulched, memories bed seeds

 

 

 

 

 

festive purple chasse

season’s muse dances mid-air

floral buds stretch 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, the cradling

 

of your briefly-here babe

in what might have been

childhood

bouncing atop your knees

near a late winter’s hearth-fire

 

hands raw, you dig up ground

to lay down memories

not swaddled

 

 

 

 

 

Waking

   After “Winter Trees”, William Carlos Williams

 

Trees

stand still

in winter, yes.

But

they do not sleep.

Hours

blanket them,

give cover

to fox, coyote,

and wolf

            in dense shadows.

 

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting

for birds, squirrels,

possums,

and other prey

            to grow tired.

 

Just before sun-up,

trees shudder,

shake off

sheets of rest,

wake branched creatures

who start singing;

a chorus

            their lives depend upon.

  

 

 

 

 

Winter herd

 

Northern reindeer cross frozen tundra

before early spring warms ice

into pools too cold to swim.

 

They stop only when pregnant does,

wombs heavy, slide sideways

 as cervixes soften.

 

Fawns born too weak

will not be left on the floe

for final darkness.

 

They will be nudged

onto the antlers of bucks

circling back around –

 

breath steaming out their nostrils.