In Just Winter

In just Winter
The world smells like ham and cheese sandwiches
which I notice as I walk from class
Past the table where Dom sells
truffles
and love poems
for Valentine's Day
and I keep my head down
because I promised to buy one
and I haven't.
I used to pick the melty cheese
off the sandwiches we had at school
and eat just bread,
wincing as I encountered some American
I had missed.
Past the igloo on the mall
soft and melty
the entrance a black hole with mush surrounding
I never went in, you know?
Mom used to tell me not to make snow forts like that
because they can collapse
and crush you into suffocating whiteness.
I was only allowed to dig a little bit into the plowed snow
at the edge of the driveway, making a half cave
that barely concealed my sled and I.
It's just Winter
and the world is of softening snow
and ham and cheese sandwiches.
Someone asked me why I didn't say anything in American Lit.
Her name might have been Brittany or Angela.
I said I just didn't feel like it.
How does one explain
that the soggy world outside
(even as it dissolves into nothing)
means more today
(as it drips to nothing)
than even F. Scott Fitzgerald?

Manna

Poetry Friday is here again, and with it comes a snow-themed poem that quite eclipses the one I wrote earlier this week:

Everywhere, everywhere, snow sifting down,
a world becoming white, no more sounds,
no longer possible to find the heart of the day,
the sun is gone, the sky is nowhere, and of all
I wanted in life – so be it – whatever it is
that brought me here, chance, fortune, whatever
blessing each flake of snow is the hint of, I am
grateful, I bear witness, I hold out my arms,
palms up, I know it is impossible to hold
for long what we love of the world, but look
at me, is it foolish, shameful, arrogant to say this,
see how the snow drifts down, look how happy
I am.

-Manna, by Joseph Stroud

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Kleenex used and then tossed on floor in contaminated white piles: 50
Tablespoons of Nyquil taken: 2
Pages of research paper written: 0
Pages of Harry Potter 7 read: 50
Realizing that I can turn Fridays on my blog into Poetry Fridays (like Melissa Wiley: http://melissawiley.com/blog/): Priceless

Here you are, with a half hour to spare:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

-Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, by Dylan Thomas