Happy New Year!
from A Window in New England
from A Window in New England
This morning the light is bleached by cold. Pinhole sun caught up in clear quartz. Blinded, I read the quiet unwriting frost, field, fence, gull. * Church bells bend into syllables, into patterns: these leafless shadows on the lawn clawing toward asphalt, dispersing the day. * Now the room contains the season, its signs inscribe the wall, ink their way across. When wind litters air the lines vibrate—the room moves. * A silence beyond mind, beyond thought. The way air and light hum soundless- ly over a field patched with frost. The way vision listens. * Call it December— skyline abbreviated by a rogue cloud deck. Dead leaves rattle through traffic. Another world closes in. * Nothing to pronounce but morning’s disorder. What the dark sifts into light: the room and its corners— this illegible shadow.
The whole thing - so beautiful.
And this is perfection . . .
"A silence beyond
mind, beyond thought. The way air
and light hum soundless-
ly over a field patched with
frost. The way vision listens."
Beautiful, but the cold feeling this poem forces me to recall is something I don't miss. There's a kind of stasis that the weather forces upon everyone in the northern climates at this time of year that is both gorgeous and awful. Anyway. Thank you and Happy new year!