Almost Winter Meditation

Bob, , , ,

The cold swept the roads white.
The stars, strung out
On the hard sky like
Stones or shale or walnut casings.

The eddies of galaxies twined
In super structures of time
And gravity, that they are
Something, just something,
Bristling with difference,
And have stakes in life and death,
In bright clouds and fanning out
Vistas of turning horizons,
And blood in the veins, the sport
Of poetry and fielding
These spurred walks. That land
Me the miles of my untutored
Meanderings. And while some
Count the face of the dice, others
Its turns and hops.

The turns and hops of stars
And seasons, of fields swept
Brown and gray, the eddies of
Frustration, joy, love and the death
Of those lost from us, the mud
And frost, the swirling radiating
Surface of suns, or dark still rain puddles.
A journal of swirling words
On the surface of our diaries.
The difference how a road feels
At night or at dawn
As we foot its length.

A beautiful commotion of nonsense
And brevity. A madcap
Poetry perchance a narrow escape
From meaning.

17 thoughts on “Almost Winter Meditation”

  2. Like John, I particularly love that last stanza. Stunning. But there is much beautiful imagery and thought throughout the rest. Ha ha. John got there first. I also like the Journal of swirling words and the line about “how a road feels / at night or at dawn / As we foot its length”. It made me think.

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  4. A great intro to winter which is not easy to do unless one likes to ski, but there is something about the air in winter that feels better……”untutored meanderings” is excellent and reminds of the walks you describe in your poems and all the surprise discoveries. It’s great being surprised, maybe not at first, maybe it’s jarring, but in the end good for the mental state. I’m gonna remember the lines “And while some Count the face of the dice, others Its turns and hops.” It’s like left brain/right brain or in baseball speak, those that swear by advanced metrics and its opposite, those that insist on the eye test.

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    1. Thanks Steve. Winter is not easy to love, or even like. But is does bring out some musings. Blame that on the lack of sunlight I guess. But there are moments it is beautiful. Maybe at our age, it’s just as necessary to unlearn (untutored) ourselves. I like your analogy about stats in baseball. I’ve always wonder how stats could fit in a player like Scott Brosius. Who had average numbers, but come the playoffs just took it to another level. How do you account for that.

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      1. Sorry to take this into the baseball realm, but you raise a great question Bob. It’s a fun topic. The debate over whether or not clutch exists often times ends up with a discussion of Derek Jeter who enjoyed a little over a season’s worth of post season at bats – 650 and amazingly his batting average and on base percentage were almost identical to his career regular season average. The ensuing argument is that clutch doesn’t exist, that if you give a player enough at bats, he will revert to his norm, that players who reach the high level of major league baseball are mentally fit to handle pressure. Personally, I think some players are better equipped to deal with mentally challenging moments and so I guess I believe in clutch.

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      3. That’s a great example, Knoblauch. I think they call them the nips. I think for some players they start thinking too much which I can relate to because I sometimes think myself back into bed, feeling down about everything. It’s amazing that more baseball players don’t feel depressed considering all the times they fail.

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