winterspoems

This Place

Wind lies not soft
and easy on the earth

but heavy like dusk. I am watching it
as it moves low and steady, crossing

the entire length of the field.
Before it, a gray mist silently glides

against the tall grass and the almost
indistinguishable earth. The blades sway,

nudged and prodded, at the whim
of the slightest breeze or heartbeat

before it shifts suddenly. I lean close.
Yes, I say. It is a whisper—

a gasp of exhaustion panted
into the soft flesh of the earth—

made even more tender by dew
and the remnants of last night’s drizzle.

I swallow a tightness that comes up
suddenly into my mouth.

As much as I fight it,
I force myself to turn—

to walk with my back to this wind
despite the fact that it makes me feel

clean and exultantly pure
in a way I never have before.

This one perfect moment

A whorl of blue and rust
turns slowly to an existence
so subtle we might not
even notice it.
The fiery glory jaundices
the arch of the sky, hidden from us
by knotty birch trunks
and grasping fingers of branches.

A steady sigh is going on
someplace nearer than
we thought or imagined.

It hovers there—
the voice of what
surrounds us.

All we hear—
in this one perfect moment—
is its steady, unrelenting
yesssss!

Another Day

How is it
that we have
come even
this far? Remember

another day
when you were so
full of anguish
you could not even see

beyond the parameter
of that afternoon?
Now the world,
though no kinder,

is less angry (or so
you believe) and
even less intent on
that harm you imagined

it so full of that almost
forgotten day.
The season moves in
the wind and leaves

you standing
with its exhausted
hope lying at your feet.
The day is over,

it seems to say, and so
too the fevered frustrations
of that strange youth,
only slightly misspent.

We Wait

“The meaning is in the waiting.”
—R.S. Thomas

The shadows are roaming
through the trees. They are passing,
back and forth, between
that distant place and
this nearer comfort. They move
before us, all the way to
the other side and back.
Wherever the sun goes,
they go too.

We wait
for them to glide over
the entire length of the earth
on which we
sit before we get up and
move, leaving behind
these lengthening impressions
like a distant—yet still
pulsing—daydream.

For so long

The afternoon is dying faster
than we expect.
The shadows turn pale blue between
the trees. I see
swirling curlicues of rain
and mist moving
in the low brush.
Fingers of grass and leaves
grasp each other,
kneading the tired
mud beneath them like
a well-worked clay.

Something similar to obsession
runs wild upon
this earth I find so comforting
and yet so sad. A late season
loneliness
strays—just beyond
my vision, in the darkness that
gathers thick and persistent
in the farthest copse.

We can only
just barely make it
out—the loneliness we have
dreaded all our long lives.
It is waiting for
us, as the almost-
forgotten face of someone
we have longed to see
for so long.

Almost There

The lake reflects
the wrong scenery.

We reach out for it,
almost as we would a star
or a low-lying cloud.

We’re half-way there.
There—
where violets bloom
all through the day.

We’re almost there—
where the oak’s own branches
reach forward
to touch its reflection
just as we might
touch our own.

Red Tree

a gift from Gin

For over a month, fire has raged
on the otherwise bare white wall—
a single red flame like the sanctuary
light before the symbol-festooned aumbry
that heralds the sacred Presence.
All this time it glows there—
red as a heart and just as big.
It pulsed there—
thudding steadily against the wall
the way a well-wound clock does.

It shimmers and sways
as though caught in
some perpetual autumn backdraft.

For over a month, fire has burned
on my wall without consuming it.
It leaves no ash, no ghost of itself
in an exhausting exhale of gray smoke.
It burns simply, fueled by its own
bursting forth.

This Grass is now available. The book includes both poems by Jamie and paintings by
artist Gin Templeton.

The book is available for $35.00 plus $5.00 postage & handling from

Enso Press
P.O. Box 10115
Fargo, ND 58104

Poems from
This Grass

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