Showing winter the door [poem: Winter]

I’ve been watching snow and ice disappear from my yard this week, but the air is still too cold and the ground too frozen for me to venture outdoors for long. Instead, I’m inside, editing articles about gardening and gathering ideas for summer adventures in dirt. It makes me think about how I’m drawn to fiction that emphasizes spring and summer during the darkest days of the year and how fire season draws my eyes to water-starved peaks, wishing they were covered in the white shroud that hosts such a glorious alpenglow. It’s yet another reminder of how human I am, always longing for what I can’t have.

I’ve been working on just such a poem of seasonal longing in the Get Poetry writing workshop, which is off to a fabulous start in its first few weeks. I’m helping to run the workshop, so if you are a local poet you should join us! My workshop piece is not yet ready to post, so I offer this wintery poem before turning my face toward the sun.

But first, thanks again to Jingle, Vinay, and everyone with the Thursday Poets Rally for their mad organizing skills and dedication the online poetry community. I gratefully accept this award and nominate Words Asunder for this week.

Winter

Where I move softly in summer,
the motion of water over rock
masking my steady footfalls,
I now break through silence.
Boots press to fallen leaves
etched with a sparkling frost,
intricate filigree,
that shatters with each step.
The crackle carries in
winter’s chilly stillness
across the hard, frozen
surface of the water
that stretches endlessly
as though unbreakable.

But beneath the ice,
the river still flows.
Slowly, beautifully,
shifting patterns of
hollows and bubbles
press themselves against
the shell that makes the
river hold its breath
and wait patiently
until it is time
to slip through the cracks
that threaten to form
and push this winter
into memory.

This river reminds me of you
in its wintertime contradiction:
at once quiet and wild.
So eager and willing,
yet patient and careful,
you will handle my heart—
the one so recently
fused together again—
with such gentle passion.
You see how easily
its filigreed surface
can be cracked and broken
like the river’s edge
stomped by a careless boot.

—Julie Laing

You can hear me read this poem at the Kalispell Get Poetry Open Mic, thanks to the work of Mat Lee and The Jamhole. My reading starts around minute 9, but be sure to check out some of the other fabulous poets who were at this event. My other poems in this reading are “Blond Boys” and “The Inner Room.”