Happy First Day of Winter, Everyone!
Hath winter then a heart of tenderness
For landscapes clad in rags of brown and gray?
Where farewell and arrival coalesce
Winter spills forth as autumn slips away
She touches with redemption-tinted garb
The stricken aftermath of summer cheer
Her sugar-coated kisses soothe the yard
Where yesterday it suffered autumn’s tear
And where the wanton field lay naked, bare
She wreaths its frond and furrow with the gleam
Of diamonds fit to garnish angel’s hair
Tucking to earth the farmer’s finished dream
Granting a gilded respite to his care
Spilling from sky a snowflake-choir requiem
***
Tis right to entertain both joy and grief
This season; the portent of hope and fear
Where we embark anew, the shoal, the sheaf
Of garnered days melded to bygone year
Like gathered harvest, seed then deed is wrought
Preserved beyond the elements of time
Its echoes tune the pastures of our thought
Where longing and fulfillment toll their chime
And now a gracious sheath of purity
Embellishes the dull and stricken plain
A mother with compassion’s sympathy
Blankets the grim reminders of our pain
Drawing our eyes to present mystery
History sleeps; to linger there is vain
***
Hath winter then a heart of tenderness?
White snow covers a year of scarlet tears
The barren bough reaches for her caress
The heart reaches beyond past hurt and fears
To offerings of hope and happiness
Unblemished; yet again a gift of grace
Ignores our monuments of selfishness
Where we have scathed and scarred her virgin face
With sordid sins of foolish fantasies
Time’s vault will not exhume our leaps of woe
But gently leads us from these agonies
Across a threshold unmarred as fresh snow
Granting to us but this; our memories
To keep the good then let the remnant go
Janet Martin~
Winter wanders in
wearing a white bridal gown
earth carries her veil
Winter Poem for the Child in Us...
Reluctant, defeated, autumn succumbs
To winter’s purposed and powerful grip
Stealthily sleek, silver silencing numbs
The ends of our noses and fingertips
Harshly the wind rakes its talons of steel
Over the cusp of the leafy-fringed ponds
Somewhere up yonder it touches a wheel
Showering the earth with quadrillion diamonds
Winter ah, winter, the predisposed foe
Open your pockets and bring on the snow
Pull out your mittens and dust off your sled
Bundle your babies in jackets of fleece
Starry-eyed children with cheeks painted red
Shrieking and rolling in winter’s release
Frosty the snowman returns to his post
Corn pipe and blue scarf to ward off the chill
Miniature angels in unnumbered hosts
Cover the rooftop and valley and hill
Tumbling and twirling and spiraling down
Winter returns in her star-studded gown
Spring, summer, autumn, green, azure and gold
Planting and pruning and gathering in
Winter is white bringing with the sharp cold
A season of rest and of quieting
Gather your loved ones around the warm hearth
Kinder is love when the fretting winds blow
Winter is keeping the seed in the earth
Tucking its bed with a blanket of snow
Its days are as numbered as all other things
Winter; the glorious harbinger of spring
Janet Martin
From left to right...
