Reflections on Winter (repost) 

For a while I switched from tarot 

to playing cards.

Just regular old cards. 

No pretty pictures.

No Colman-Smith. 

No abstract art. 

No rainbow colors. 

Just numbers and suit, 

black and red, 

blood and ash,  

energy and associations. 

And the associations are easy

with ordinary cards.

Spades are winter,

spades are dark.

The Queen, the twelfth card

of her suit,

a winter queen,

a waning year.

This is how you time a reading.

And I timed every reading out

to December,

to myself,

to that sharp and solitary queen.

Today is a turning point in time.

The air is cold and the wind is strong.

And air is winter.

Air is spirit

and, if you're lucky, inspiration,

new ideas and looking inward.

And I have been luckier in this regard

than in others.

Today is a new month and a new year.

The yard is a monochrome of snow

and dormant garden.

There are crows calling from the trees

loud and free and wild.

And the sky beyond the branches

isn't gray or silver

but really surprisingly blue.

Blue enough to get my attention.

Blue enough to anchor me

to this scene, this spot, this lonely season.

So I stand outside until my feet are cold

and I think that this is probably

where all the symbols point.

Not where you've been,

not where you're going

but the absolute magnitude

of where you are.

Today I know exactly

where that is.

Today is Sunday,

early January.

Today is number one of seven.

Today is number one of twelve.

And one is creation and renewal.

One is power under pressure.

One is stepping out and starting over,

and the single, shaking breath we take

before we leap.

I wrote this poem on January 1st, 2017. I was still reading cards professionally then and spent a lot of time making guesses about the future. I stopped reading later that year, and when I picked it up again I saw it differently. In keeping with the spirit of this poem. I no longer read professionally or make predictions.

Appalachia, On Leaving  

Only rain and streets of wet magnesium. 

These hundred panes are filled with

watered down yellow light. 

But the corners of the shop are webbed

with shadow.

There should be carriages and gas-lights here

but there is only a maroon and gold awning

out there across the street.

The tiny panes run with rain, blur the words,

whatever words

glisten up above that awning.

Plate glass windows and clothes behind.

Kresge's yellow-purple cotton housecoats,

old display cases, nineteen-forties styles,

and every looks so old.

My face, these shops, slip along grey-hound windows

lose their hold

and vanish.

Plans forgotten before the coffee's cold.

Promises I can't forget.

And you within your distance.

Tomorrow is waiting in a shipping crate,

one more highway, one more home.

I can't stop now.

So this time it's Miami, because there's no place left

I haven't been.

I take what was me in two-fisted filthy chunks

and wrench it out.

__________

The postcard above is a the actual view across the river less than a half mile down from my grandparents farm

My Grandparent's Farm, Appalachian Mountains of NE Pennsylvania

"Winter in Miami" 

My grandmother only goes to funerals.  

She will never see Florida 

but she has the world  

in her windows. 

In the morning the river is fog 

and the trees are lost.

Sunrise happens way up high.

It spills down the slopes,

and shines brighter than itself

in the imperfections of old glass.

There is shade all day until 

the sun gets lost in the hills again

and the light come on.

Forever is train noises and headlights

in the dark and every star in the universe

shining out across the fields.

I have been to Florida over and over

until I lost count.

Black seaweed, white sand,

the ocean is always itself.

The whole of humanity sits on towels

to watch it

stretch out of sight.

I wasn't ever there for that.

I was there for the dark days

and the rain.

Days when the wild things

cry out across the everglades

and the black-winged birds

come pouring in from the North

to wage war

upon the backlot dumpsters.

Days when the ocean churns its garbage out

onto cold beaches

and the tourists leave Miami

looking for other 

better places

where the weather is constant

and the sea 

stands still.

Be glad, O children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given the early rain for our vindication; he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the latter rain, as before.  “The threshing floors shall be full of grain; the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.  I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten...   - Joel 2:23-25

Detroit, Michigan

About this Poem

I wrote the first version of this poem when I was 17 or 18 and, even though I rewrote several years later, it is still awkward.  In many ways, it is, and was, more symbolic than literal.  Because even though it is about the city of Detroit, out of all the cities I have lived in, I probably knew Detroit the least.  

It is true that I was born there but it is also true that we moved to the suburbs when I was still quite young and then to Indiana when I was 13.  Meaning that, aside from the occasional event or shopping trip, I spent most of my childhood in the suburbs.  Things were not, of course, all good winds.  As I think is evident between the lines of the poem.

When I was old enough to drive, I went back and forth between Indiana and Michigan almost every weekend.  I spent most of my time there in closer proximity to the city.  A few years later, after the birth of my son, I moved to the Northeast Appalachian Mountains near to where my maternal grandparents lived. And stayed there.

I never went back to Detroit.  And I never went back to Indiana either.

A Short Dream

Childhood was such a short dream.

Michigan, all good wind and apples

giving way early to Detroit,

The hard city nights chain linked

and dangerous.

Childhood was a dozen ponds,

soft with algae, reed encircled,

one big Rousseaux - with no explanations.

We trouped through the wind-breaker days,

the almost time for dinner evenings.

That's all.

Later there were barbeques

and cousins coming.

Sweet purple and white nights

of wet grass, wide lawns, air and space.

We spun beneath all the pale moons until

we fell drunk upon wet earth,

toadstools, violet skies and Venus.

The Church stood in its own

pale bright light.

Pastel coasts, dark communions 

and a light which said

Eternal Life

But all that I've seen passes.

And somewhere beyond

all that motion

angels

to guide us.

Guiding me

through yellow lit tunnels,

dark houses huddling behind

the street lights.

A clear cold world of dark cars 

and black glass,

A galaxy of light like China Town

at New Year's.

And in the end it was Detroit

that somehow captured me.

In spite of, because of

the rummage sale sidewalks

rain on the windows.

In the end 

It was Detroit.

Empty shops, empty streets

and too much light 

in too much darkness.

_________

Providentially, the end in the poem wasn't the end of my story.