Christina Rossetti: In the bleak midwinter
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
Video: The Scroll of the Prophet Isaiah
“I work after his voice and do exactly what he says to do… He put up what colors he want. I don’t know about them.”
Michael T. Young: The Gift
I’m rocked into fields
of a lyrical witness, history rolls over
glittering in sunlight
Angele Ellis: Wonderful Life
We are halfway between Bedford and Pottersville:
the kindness of community, the chill greed of despair.
Philip Terman: Darwish and Amichai Share Poems in Heaven
the breath of their words
shaping the winds
across the deserts
of their homeland,
which is the same homeland
Warsan Shire: Home
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
Jim Daniels: Waking Nightmare, 2019
Wilting in the face
of true evil, unprepared for the torn-up rulebook,
the pissed-on rulebook, we pouted on the sidelines…
William Bronk: Music that Sees Beyond the World
Decembers, the little deaths of dark pool down.
Intricate, bare branches blot in the dark.
Ellen McGrath Smith — Corona: The Apples in Winter
The emotions go somewhere. Like water, they find
their own depth and go somewhere.
The salmon-smudged sunset unravels December
as Saturn comes in to make judgments,
name debts.
Doug Anderson: South of Laramie
And that is the way with love.
Speak only when you cannot help it.
However strange and vibrant the sound.
Karen Friedland: A Prayer for Rough Sleepers
Someone, give us the strength
to survive this particular onslaught
of cell-death and other indignities
Paul Celan: Death Fugue
Black milk of dawn we drink it in the evening
we drink it at noon and in the morning we drink it at night
Aesop: The Frogs Ask for a King
Once upon a time, the Frogs were discontented because they had no one to rule over them: so they sent a deputation to Jupiter to ask him to give them a King.
Anonymous: The Ruin
Wondrous is this wall-stead, wasted by fate.
Battlements broken, giant’s work shattered.
