Dispatch #37

Year’s End (Winter Solstice)

This is the last Dispatch of the year. I’ll spend the next few weeks fortifying my sanity as the holiday season drags on; I’d like to get some more writing done too.

Thank you for your readership over these past however many months of weekly poems. It’s satisfying to have an audience outside of the Official Poetry pipeline.

I hope the rest of the year rolls by smoothly and safely for all of you and your loved ones.

I’ll appear in your inbox again in January!

Happy Holidays—

Joseph

p.s. A special thank you to my paid subscribers. You help keep the lights on in my hovel.

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Year’s End (Winter Solstice)

What began with bewilderment
ends with fatigue. Pixelated
days dispersed into static
we mistook for speech.
We stopped listening
how many shocks ago.
The horror and how it hollows.
One way out
is to locate grace in a walk
and receive a tree’s bare
but bright frequency.
Notice the waxing gibbous
afternoon moon
smudged above a shuttered
Bank of America—lucent,
resigned to its transparency.
See starlings
expand and collapse
like lungs exhaling dusk.
Now the long night,
a long silence
if we’ll let it find us.