Winter's Poet
As the wren, by instinct,
flies South across the quickening air,
so did she sing when winter came
of wet winds, heavy with crystal,
bending boards of barns,
torched icicles in sunlit eaves,
snow-holes poked by water.
She was frost's glad caller:
the woolly whistle of her breath
sent plumes of celebration
into doveless trees,
their branches wet as lust;
their bases knuckled, clenched.
Spruces in loud storms' vibratos
loosed their sagging loads
saluting her as she trod along,
left footprint signatures
on snow-white, shining fields.
Bridges, heavy with new ice,
creaked with pleasure
as she trod their slippery paths.
Ponds whose thin, quicksilver skin
would not have held a bird
supported her as she picked her way.
Even wolves appeared to favor her.
She often stood long minutes
still as a snowwoman listening
to drips of water from bare trees.
The in a sober, mystical mood
she crossed the ice-bound brook
which whispered past her home,
entered the old, Victorian house,
wiped the sweating windows clean.
From there she watched
the evenings tilt away.
As shadows clotted on the fields
impressions of that world
poured from her fertile pen.
She was winter's chosen poet,
bard of hip-deep drifts. I knew her
only through blurred visions,
but she gifted me that season
with bright sparkling odes.
Then when the sun stood up;
snow ebbed with the moon;
the days grew longer, lighter.
I called on her again
for more short luminous lines,
but she refused to answer.
Without a word or wave goodbye
she vanished into nature's wilds,
my fever's genius sprite.
After the Fire
Slowly, with the weight of many centuries upon them,
old wheels turn along the rutted ground.
And I, who have never heard this sound,
somehow know it now: strange squeak of wheels
set into axles by a peg, the suck of mud
at feet of oxen, the rattle and the strain of wood.
I hear it now, as I can hear the sounds
of wars for many centuries, and see disasters grow
from flash of swords to brief and terrible suns.
The filaments of men’s minds glow brightly
over near horizons, and I pause to listen,
counting seconds to the slow, inexorable sound.
But what I hear while waiting for man’s thunder
are the distances of history: peasants felling trees
and sawing them in sections, women beating hides,
and children crying awe at the immensity,
great wooden wheels to ride over rutted ground.
The Fat Man
It was a brittle winter night,
the moon melting with the snow.
All day the crack of ice
from the tortured creek had echoed
through the rafters of his cabin.
He sat by the fire and talked,
spoke only to the tongues of heat,
the hot sap's crackle.
After a time he wiped a porthole
through the breathy window,
watched the shadows massing on the fields.
Across the flats of snow
a bluejay skipped its shade,
gliding with an icy cross of wings.
Then it came to him,
the kinship of all living things:
he had his cross in summer
when flesh hung heavy on his bones
and sweat dripped off his face
like melted wax, but in the winter,
when the earth was clenched and hungry,
he was free: the round flesh insulated him.
There is a season for each of us, he said.
He was winter's kin, the host of snowmen
so he stepped out naked into the last of the winds.
John Laue, a former editor of Transfer and Associate Editor of San Francisco Review has won awards for his poetry and prose. With six published books to his credit, he presently coordinates the reading series of The Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium, edits the online magazine Monterey Poetry Review, and is a member and former Co-Chair of the Santa Cruz County Mental Health Advisory Board.
As the wren, by instinct,
flies South across the quickening air,
so did she sing when winter came
of wet winds, heavy with crystal,
bending boards of barns,
torched icicles in sunlit eaves,
snow-holes poked by water.
She was frost's glad caller:
the woolly whistle of her breath
sent plumes of celebration
into doveless trees,
their branches wet as lust;
their bases knuckled, clenched.
Spruces in loud storms' vibratos
loosed their sagging loads
saluting her as she trod along,
left footprint signatures
on snow-white, shining fields.
Bridges, heavy with new ice,
creaked with pleasure
as she trod their slippery paths.
Ponds whose thin, quicksilver skin
would not have held a bird
supported her as she picked her way.
Even wolves appeared to favor her.
She often stood long minutes
still as a snowwoman listening
to drips of water from bare trees.
The in a sober, mystical mood
she crossed the ice-bound brook
which whispered past her home,
entered the old, Victorian house,
wiped the sweating windows clean.
From there she watched
the evenings tilt away.
As shadows clotted on the fields
impressions of that world
poured from her fertile pen.
She was winter's chosen poet,
bard of hip-deep drifts. I knew her
only through blurred visions,
but she gifted me that season
with bright sparkling odes.
Then when the sun stood up;
snow ebbed with the moon;
the days grew longer, lighter.
I called on her again
for more short luminous lines,
but she refused to answer.
Without a word or wave goodbye
she vanished into nature's wilds,
my fever's genius sprite.
After the Fire
Slowly, with the weight of many centuries upon them,
old wheels turn along the rutted ground.
And I, who have never heard this sound,
somehow know it now: strange squeak of wheels
set into axles by a peg, the suck of mud
at feet of oxen, the rattle and the strain of wood.
I hear it now, as I can hear the sounds
of wars for many centuries, and see disasters grow
from flash of swords to brief and terrible suns.
The filaments of men’s minds glow brightly
over near horizons, and I pause to listen,
counting seconds to the slow, inexorable sound.
But what I hear while waiting for man’s thunder
are the distances of history: peasants felling trees
and sawing them in sections, women beating hides,
and children crying awe at the immensity,
great wooden wheels to ride over rutted ground.
The Fat Man
It was a brittle winter night,
the moon melting with the snow.
All day the crack of ice
from the tortured creek had echoed
through the rafters of his cabin.
He sat by the fire and talked,
spoke only to the tongues of heat,
the hot sap's crackle.
After a time he wiped a porthole
through the breathy window,
watched the shadows massing on the fields.
Across the flats of snow
a bluejay skipped its shade,
gliding with an icy cross of wings.
Then it came to him,
the kinship of all living things:
he had his cross in summer
when flesh hung heavy on his bones
and sweat dripped off his face
like melted wax, but in the winter,
when the earth was clenched and hungry,
he was free: the round flesh insulated him.
There is a season for each of us, he said.
He was winter's kin, the host of snowmen
so he stepped out naked into the last of the winds.
John Laue, a former editor of Transfer and Associate Editor of San Francisco Review has won awards for his poetry and prose. With six published books to his credit, he presently coordinates the reading series of The Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium, edits the online magazine Monterey Poetry Review, and is a member and former Co-Chair of the Santa Cruz County Mental Health Advisory Board.