Whisper, Winter

 

Whisper, winter, where your winds will wander –

Over mountain, meadow, deep or shallow.

Whisper, wisdom, where the year will sunder,

Flames extinguished from the wick and tallow.

Every mile traversed will mark the marrow

Aching in the frigid cold, but follow

Every trial until the road will narrow,

Pointing toward the way where every hollow

Offers shelter from the winter storming.

Even when the snowy clouds are forming,

Somewhere else the slope of season’s arrow

Points another way, and with the morning

Comes a warmer dawn of light adorning

Summer skies of sapphire blue. I wander

Through the splintered sights of seasons’ turning.

Whisper, winter, cover summer’s thunder,

Play your part in hearts’ and climates’ churning.

 

I wrote this poem while thinking about how different this part of the year is in Kenya, compared with a place like Pennsylvania or Illinois. Winter's winds have certainly not been wandering over Nairobi. I also wanted to play around with trochaic meter a bit. For those interested in the mechanics of poetry, a poem that is in trochaic meter contains lines where the first of every two syllables is stressed. In contrast, most of what I write is in iambic meter, which is the opposite. Iambic tends to be the more natural rhythm in English, and it's the rhythm found in most of Shakespeare's work. So, I wanted to try something that was completely in trochaic meter this time.