April 23, 2019
First, a look back at the season just past and poems written across previous Februaries.
THE FOUNDERING
It is mid-winter,
and every year I vow
that this one will be different —
that I will avoid doubt and second guessing,
that I will take this gift of quiet time
and fashion something more meaningful :
more poems, more prayers, new commitments–
But each February I drown a little –
I allow too much TV and
too much contemplation.
The framework of busy joy
that I scrambled up in the fall
has grown rickety,
and cynicism feeds at its foundation.
Is this new life real?
Am I truly redeemed? —
or am I just repeating myself…
creature forever of habit,
committing by degrees
to the same changes —
discovering over and over again
my usual place
and exclaiming anew —
EXHALE
The blinds move gently
with the nightly exhale
of a house with too many doors
and while I dream of people lost
time missed and choices
gone astray,
the same are stirring in the hall
finding windows and
escaping into night.
THE CAMPUS IN FEBRUARY
I must be getting older —
the restlessness of mid-winter moving on–
for today,
I am content to watch
the dusk open its arms to night
as I walk across campus, muffled
against the cold, noting with satisfaction
how deeply the February light still lingers
in the glazed headers of these grand old brick buildings
and how the students, oblivious to any chill,
walk with coats flapping open,
heads bent intimately over their cell phones.
Copyright 2019 by Martha T. Terrell
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