Winter Solstice Poem by michael hogan

Winter Solstice

Rating: 5.0


for Lucinda

At the southernmost point the sun
stands guarding a place
where light creates an illusion
of the perfect sphere.

Though not there
we string bright glass
on small evergreens
and leave to Neiman-Marcus and others
the waste of a hundred years of growing
in the shadow of a hundred homeless
dying in the streets
a few blocks away.

But what I really want to say
this time of year when the Celtic
tide of my blood flows to trees
to darkened places a continent away
and grandmother piecing a "comfortable"
from printed cotton and remnants
of old aprons to lay upon the crib
of a child not born
is how we move in ways like that
sometimes
and are stopped briefly
to remember Sunday mornings
and say: The smell of bacon
reminds me of death.
And how we touch most vitally then.
Although we know of other ways of touching:
an unexplored link between
sciatica and levels of testosterone.

I think of how my life has gone
expecting signs like that

and finding
them lead down empty roads
and wondering if I'd ever
think straight again.
Now, in the battered harness of sobriety
sullen with half-measures
I think of how all my desires
are like crabs in the bin at Fisherman's Wharf

until even the mundane
becomes precious to me.

This morning there is a sparrow
perched on a telephone line behind the house
flinging his song to the wind.
It is raining and cold.
I know that getting out of the rain
is the beginning of understanding only
that it is still the dream of music
which keeps us going
as the road dips unexpectedly again
then water floods
the few green shoots growing
desperately through the cracks.

I wanted to say how I know
that moments like that
shed of symbolism, or full of it
can take us by surprise if we let them
can accumulate
and lead to enchantment

so that when we sometimes feel
little or mean or ugly
a reservoir is there.
And how the soul is no fiction:
there is a celestial chaperon
who leads us if we let her
to enchanted places;
that the same breath
that allows us to disfigure our lives
can metabolize joy

and that a good friendship
euchres the universe.

Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Topic(s) of this poem: friendship
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michael hogan

michael hogan

Newport, Rhode Island
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