Entering Winter with a Line
from Gwendolyn Brooks
Horizon’s burst-smear of pink nonchalance
forgets We are things of dry hours and the
involuntary plan. In winter’s vise
I’ll wrestle— flail! —stampedes of elegies,
pendulums of memory, sidestepping
swathes of snow-fall brindled with late oak leaves’
yieldings: autumn’s ceding. But from this blunt
and silhouetted terrain, ranging out
tactically, cautious in my happenstance,
I will still delight—plod, but still ignite.
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D. R. James has taught college writing, literature, and peace-making for 36 years and lives in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest collections are If god were gentle (Dos Madres) and Surreal Expulsion (Poetry Box), and a new chapbook, Flip Requiem, will release in March 2020 (Dos Madres). https://www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage
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