In December I find
In December I find
the stillness in my heart
headed for the mid-winter.
If we keep time enough
we might make it through —
to daffodils in spring,
summer peace.
Cold beers, strangers, tipsy enough
to live.
But if the unassuaged darkness
of cold December,
tender with sorrow upon contact,
taunts you with a warm death —
then be still, my love
be still, my heart
lest remembering tears us apart.
I will lie in wait beneath
awake without memories.
I won’t remember, for the life of me,
how to forget.
Only a handful of dust
only some loose change,
only half-smoked, half-abandoned cigarettes
on the lonely moated grange
will bear witness to a life half-missed.
Was it almost enough?
Under a starless winter sky,
faded, benumbed scars,
I saw a violence and a love
and caught in the wind, a remorse:
yes, it was almost enough.
Soon the earth will retract
from the herder’s whistle and beat.
Soon my heart will awake
from a century’s slumber and beat.
Soon I will hear the wilderness,
the wild cattle, and weep.
How do you convince the orphaned calf
that he is not wild with grief?
When you unearth the poor bastard,
let night stay a moment more.
If only for a moment, and almost a moment more,
let him keep the kindness
on a body yet unscored.
Let him know stillness
like a grandfather clock arriving
stillness like a raindrop hanging
from his own hand, on the cusp of unbecoming.
Let him find stillness in his old heart,
which still remembers,
and still is beating.
