Poetry Friday: Settling Down for Winter

Writerly Friends, a series of upcoming deadlines has conspired with the winter holidays to stress me out this year. 

There will be lots of Christmas and Solstice goodies at
Buffy's Blog. Buffy is this week's Poetry Friday hostess.

• Copy edits for Little Patuxent Review's Science issue are due.
• My daughter's high school applications are going in the mail.
• The holidays! Ack!
• And, the thing I want to work on, a manuscript deadline on 1/10.

I'm tired of sitting at my desk all day, followed by bursts of rushing out to crowded post offices and shops. It's time to settle by a fireplace (we don't have one) with some knitting or a good book.

Or maybe I should take a walk, as Thomas Hardy does in the poem, "The Darkling Thrush." His somber mood reminds me: things aren't so bad. The deadlines will be met. Our family is coming to visit and enjoy a traditional Italian Christmas Eve meal. Okay -- the Maryland crab soup isn't so traditional, but it's *our* tradition and it counts as one of the seven fishes.

Wishing you a beautiful transition through the Winter Solstice, as light returns to all of us, no matter which winter traditions you celebrate.

The Darkling Thrush

BY THOMAS HARDY

I leant upon a coppice gate

      When Frost was spectre-grey,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

      The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

      Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

      Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

      The Century's corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

      The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

      Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

      Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

      The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

      Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

      In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

      Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

      Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

      Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

      His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

      And I was unaware.