winter

cold comfort

who will hear our voices?

winter winds our walls
snow our blanket

old news now–
drowned out
by the latest atrocities

“Ukrainian Figurines” by Kirill Shevchenko (Groder) Image by Кирилл Шевченко from Pixabay

David, at The Skeptic’s Kaddish, supplied the above photo for Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday this week. I recently ran across a “42” poem I had written and the form seemed just right for this prompt. The situation in Ukraine is full of questions with no easy answers.

I did these collages in my early days of blogging, when Marcy Erb and I did a number of poetry and art collaborations. The poetic excerpt that inspired this work was from Frederick Turner.

On the Death of an Infant

Latecomer, first to go,
Like the small arctic flower
Between the snow and snow,
The fragrance of an hour.

Frederick Turner (b. 1943)

Every day new things demand our attention–but let us not forget the people of Ukraine.

weathering

Even in the midst of a snowstorm, the Oracle is thinking of the moon.

raw soaring storms sing
the music of wind—we swim
dreaming beyond sleep

we ache for the still shadow
of the black moon whispering

bare beneath sea-sky
all the mother languages
held inside light

through paths long like never

The days seem shorter than usual this winter, and greyer. The Oracle knows.

always this leavetaking–
as if the wind was a light,
an ancient breathsong to follow
into rivers rooted
beneath deep forest moonshine–
a secret buried between
winter’s dark quiet
and the cloud-covered sun

into itself

into itself s

winter leaves, overlapping
with cold wind, rain,
clouds that permeate

each every day
footsteps too heavy
to follow another

enclosed in lethargy,
the hours devoid
of song, stagnant

from here to anywhere,
held in pause–
each day a tunnel

searching for openings–
starsunmoon
glowing

A quadrille for Lillian at dVerse, using the word glow.

I always like to photograph my art in natural light, but it’s so dark here today, I also did some with the overhead light on. It gives everything a yellow tone, and doesn’t show the subtle shifts in the color any better. Maybe they’re too subtle.