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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

Winter Solstice

I fall on the blank paper like dust,
like land’s end,
like the emptiness beyond the jetty,
the calling of gulls.
As far as I can see,
an expanse of changes,
the inside of an echo,
the world’s end in an unscripted sky.
To leave the bay of my heart,
to decipher the undecipherable,
the soul locked in jaded dimensions.

I have folded the blanket of myself
from the harsh light of the sun,
un-soothed, unknown,
weary in my sleep,
pushing the puppets in my dreams
into their boxes.
Uncomprehending what the circle
of the earth wishes me to know,
or not to know,
or regret in mindless prayers.

Perhaps this is what the solstice means,
the gales of December over Lake Erie,
the brambles of cotton tuft,
and man-high grass.
Showing the world in its deep, wet dream,
shards of ice breaking on the shore,
and the lesson of a great being,
gathering to itself a tunic of frozen peace.

Am I its child shivering in the wind,
loving the gray corpus of its face,
or simply a stone among stones?
A ripple of sand with its marred poetry,
gasping its words,
telling the earth
this is a place where my children come.
To see candles in the waves,
the stained windows of myself,
welcoming and forbidding,
where only the strongest
and most devout
can share me with themselves?

Published inIndex of all Poems