December, wide with winter,
remembers the world. And the
stamped earth, trees locked in light. You
play computer chess; house dust
shimmers in its corner, and
the quiet plates, flakes lucent
as daisies dying on the
kitchen window or flying
up, the blue inside their wings.
And the whitened grass, and the
pouring cold: the children drag
their sleds across the snow block;
snow wraps the lilac, and the
winter birds, their down and their
tender legs, poke for seeds in
this paragraph of snow. How
afternoon drops into its
pocket of sky, and dusk wakes,
wind lifting a string of geese
to the stars that lean to us
and never look beyond us
into the candid night; how
we tide ourselves through the dark,
seeing by remembering,
the way time stands in for hope.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 5.
Becky Kennedy is a linguist and a college professor who lives with her family in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in a number of journals; her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
See all items about Becky Kennedy
