"Winter Grace" by Patricia Fargnoli

"Aurora Borealis"

Hand-lifted woodblock print by Eric K. Nolan.

If you have seen the snow

under the lamppost

piled up like a white beaver hat on the picnic table

or somewhere slowly falling

into the brook

to be swallowed by water,

then you have seen beauty

and know it for its transience.

And if you have gone out in the snow

for only the pleasure

of walking barely protected

from the galaxies,

the flakes settling on your parka

like the dust from just-born stars,

the cold waking you

as if from long sleeping,

then you can understand

how, more often than not,

truth is found in silence,

how the natural world comes to you

if you go out to meet it,

its icy ditches filled with dead weeds,

its vacant birdhouses, and dens

full of the sleeping.

But this is the slowed-down season

held fast by darkness

and if no one comes to keep you company

then keep watch over; your own solitude.

In that stillness, you will learn

with your whole body

the significance of cold

and the night,

which is otherwise always eluding you.

"Winter Grace" by Patricia Fargnoli, from Winter. © Hobblebush Books, 2013.