Wintry sentiments

I've been living in winter of late. And so, working on this picture, a detail of a row of scrubby elms, I was reminded of the Gordon Lightfoot song, Song for a Winter's Night (especially when sung by Quartette) and its envisioning of winter as a emotional state.


Winter trees detail...

The lines that particularly appeal at this moment are: "If I could know within my heart / That you were lonely too / I would be happy just to hold the hands I love / Upon this winter night with you." Brr...

Anyways, I've been meaning to post a 'Poem for a Winter's Night' of my own, so here's a fairly recent one from my 'definition poems' manuscript - poems that use definitions from my mother's 1964 Webster's New World Dictionary in the place of epigraphs.

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Sunset

“(sun’set) 1. the daily disappearance of the sun below the western horizon. 2. the final phase or decline (of a period.” Webster’s New World Dictionary

He is full of slumber tonight.

His eyes look past you as he slings his arms around your waist & the brittle words between you today, the soft eyes afterwards, make you teeter on his edge of affection.

He goes upstairs slowly & you take another slurp of tea as you swipe at the counter, hiding the crumbs he leaves every time in his whole-wheat half-hearted trail out.

When you finally climb into bed, the dark is full of limbs and his breath & he shudders against the cold you have brought with you, moving out of reach of your fingers.

In the morning he’ll squint against the sun and the cold outside & be thankful for this embrace, the ways in which you have become intertwined.