POETRY
Did You Hear?
a free verse poem
Did you hear the silence bearing down in the frigid cold?
If you took this road of ice, trampled into it your weary footsteps until the numb of your toes demanded your leave
and searched the drift of snowflakes for the sound and stir of peace, did you hear it in that silence?
Was the whisper too slight against your ear? Too measured in the night against the beating,
the incessant beating of your heart? Shake loose your frozen shirtsleeves and warm yourself by the fire.
Let the secrets of the cold reside in the silvery fingers of Loblolly needles, aching beneath their skins of ice.
Some secrets belong to the winter night.
I’ve been waiting patiently for snow here in the Piedmont of North Carolina. Just a few wisps of flakes, so far this year. The last few days have been freezing, gray, rainy, and miserable. I long for one wintery scene of white, framed by my window, etching at least one memory of winter, rightly placed on my heart.
For those of you who’ve had some blanketing of snow this year, I implore you to sit and write. I beg of you to give words to that wintery gift and share it with those of us waiting in the rain.
If you enjoyed this wintery poem, I invite you to read a few others I’ve written to honor the serenity of winter:
And a wintery poetry prompt:
Poetically yours,