Back for Christmas
Now, after a five-days-shy-of-three-months lapse,
I'm back in Wisconsin, back in this village, back in my rented cabin,
Back to this earthly source of inspiration I call home,
Whenever my heart petitions me, exhorts me to run away
From the civilized sound, light, air, and mind pollution asphyxiating me,
Escape my numbing humdrum, for a spell of calm.
Though, during my absence, these gorgeous North Woods
Have succumbed to hibernal shapes, shadows, snowy, shivering silences,
I've never seen these purlieus, in their pristine austerity, so beautiful.
I'm mesmerized, ebullient, ecstatic, just being here again,
Breathing in the wintry sky's scintillant, crisp, clean, clear breath,
Trying to acclimatize my listening eyes to the lake's static ice,
When, always, before, they've been beguiled hearing its glistening waves
Ripple against the dock, past the cattail beds, to the shore below my cabin.
Everything's changed so much, and so must I...so must I,
If my flesh-and-bones senses intend to surrender, this Christmastide,
To the unforgiving rigors of nature's necessary desolations
And find, in them, the essence of its blessed resurrections.
12/23/09
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