21 December

[larryhammer]

A solstice poem for you all:

    The year’s longest night
circles slowly overhead,
    marking out the time
of the sun’s southern journey,
    yet even at midnight
the desert isn’t quiet,
    and with these high clouds
the sky not completely dark --
    a haze diffuses
faint moonlight over the land,
    lighting the night-shift
of predator- and prey-work.
    Here, a bush rustles
as a rabbit hops through it;
    there, an owl’s low hoot,
then the far scrawk of another;
    a coyote sniffs
around an old open hole
    before trotting off
to prospect elsewhere for food.
    The crickets at last
have departed with autumn,
    but overnight frost
is only temporary:
    the desert may slow
in the dead of winter but
never entirely dies.

envoy
    Wood-smoke drifts slowly
in the nearly silent night,
    but its scent still spreads.
A coyote flicks its ear,
then returns to its hunting.

Comments

[mount_oregano]

Lovely.

[larryhammer]

Thankee.

[thistleingrey]

On the second read-through my mind tried fitting a tune to it, but it didn't quite go. (My deficit, not the poem's.) It has that rhythm.

[larryhammer]

Heh. The form is rhythmic, but it's not quite any of the standard rhythms we use in English. (Technically, it's syllabic, alternating lines of 5 and 7 syllables, but in practice, as part of making it flow, I often end up with 2 and 3 stresses, respectively, in each line -- but not always.)

[thistleingrey]

Yes, feeling the stresses move is part of the interest!