The ceremonies of winter
Like hunching.
Like watching
the spellcast rhythm
the narcotic swing
of the almost
empty feeder.
Like black tea
with honey.
Like February opening
the homemade sauce
frozen at first frost hint
and tasting September.
Like turning on the light.
Like waiting to turn it on:
a dusk approaching
but the snow takes on
the blue grey glowing
of the still bright sky.
Like testing my step
onto sidewalk ice
the barely grip
the splitting slide.
Like skitching across snowslush.
Like reading in the morning
the tracks in the backyard
to see if the stray dog
Julie’s named Mr. Rabies
came through on his wanderings:
this pandemic distraction.
Like loving the drip and the stain
of the just warm enough
pale as bleaching.
Like trying to find a way to name
the strange birdcalls
twisting like spiral fractures
through closed windows.
Like moments of drifted despair.
Like mica glints of barely hopefulness.
John Walser
John Walser’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Plume, Posit, Nimrod, North Dakota Quarterly, South Dakota Review and One Art. His manuscript Edgewood Orchard Galleries has been a finalist for the Autumn House Press Prize, the Ballard Spahr Prize and the Zone 3 Press Prize, as well as a semifinalist for the Philip Levine Prize and the Crab Orchard Series First Book Award. A four-time semifinalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize and a three-time Pushcart nominee, as well as a Best New Poets nominee and a Best of the Net nominee, John is a past recipient of the Lorine Niedecker Poetry Award. He is a professor of English at Marian University and lives in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, with his wife, Julie.
