The lantern swinging bearing down, pressing the dark to a sliver ... – Tobi Kassim

I am imagining pinpricks

small darts of glittering light

Stories unfolding where context is everything

And I – I know nothing

I am reader, observer, listener, writer

and there he is, penning his way through another constellation altogether

I weather the uncertainty and wonder if he, too, sees my light

Inspired by A Blind Spot, Awash by Tobi Kassim https://poets.org/poem/blind-spot-awash

Prompt via Winter #SolsticePoem Prompts (via Deanna): https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZjzQCxAlSozwsiWI-KBWYmTv6AdFEME4V9AQwrATcnE/present?slide=id.p

The infinite wheeling stars ... — Robinson Jeffers

On this, the longest of this year's nights, we bundle up to watch the sky, pieces falling, and wonder in the quiet at what it is we're watching, echoes of a distance of a faraway past, calling, messages on beams of dancing light long since extinguished, and then when we're too cold for this canvas, we're finished with the show, we pack up our blankets, hold hands, and go

Inspiration from Wonder And Joy by Robinson Jeffers https://poets.org/poem/wonder-and-joy

Prompt via Winter #SolsticePoem Prompts (via Deanna): https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZjzQCxAlSozwsiWI-KBWYmTv6AdFEME4V9AQwrATcnE/present?slide=id.p

A music wild and dangerous — Anne Porter

Voices quiver in the cold night, and shiver

and we are listening to the ways in which the words tumble

into sound, the way the snow-bound trees dip towards the ground

and on the last night, one voice remaining, a small voice, straining

and we applaud, and then stand there, in the empty space they leave behind

Inspired by Noel by Anne Porter https://poets.org/poem/noel

Prompt via Winter #SolsticePoem Prompts (via Deanna): https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZjzQCxAlSozwsiWI-KBWYmTv6AdFEME4V9AQwrATcnE/present?slide=id.p

Lean against the weight of the crescent moon, the slip slide of night like some airborne balloon

Watch the critters chatter inside the hole inside the tree

they're watching us watching it watching all the ways the shadowed orb shines

a luminous glorious wondrous light of tranquility

Inspired by Winter Twilight by Anne Porter https://poets.org/poem/winter-twilight

Prompt via Winter #SolsticePoem Prompts (via Deanna): https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZjzQCxAlSozwsiWI-KBWYmTv6AdFEME4V9AQwrATcnE/present?slide=id.p

the listener, who listens in the snow ... — Wallace Stevens

ice tendrils sing this morning's symphonic sounds in parachutes of snow

remove the knitted cap that covers up the ears and laugh at the way the wind blows

our booted feet, the drums, pounding left right left right the bass alongside the beat

and when the music ends, we move inside, still listening - echoes of a sky forever falling, notes thawing beside the heat

Inspired by The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens https://poets.org/poem/snow-man

Prompt via Winter #SolsticePoem Prompts (via Deanna): https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZjzQCxAlSozwsiWI-KBWYmTv6AdFEME4V9AQwrATcnE/present?slide=id.p

They took the wind and let it go — Sara Teasdale

I become all pocket when you become jacket

This gale wind, captured, sure makes such a racket

in protest toward surrender - no matter the outcome, remember:

nothing makes us happier than when chaos will cease,

jiggling with change, in the moment before release

Inspired by Places (iii. Winter Sun) by Sara Teasdale https://poets.org/poem/places-iii-winter-sun

Prompt via Winter #SolsticePoem Prompts (via Deanna): https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZjzQCxAlSozwsiWI-KBWYmTv6AdFEME4V9AQwrATcnE/present?slide=id.p

The whispering air ... – Walt Whitman

Leaning lips against ear

a cold weather draft being written inside here

a winter mix of disparate parts

where words touch skin- thus writes the heart

Inspired by Sounds Of The Winter by Walt Whitman https://poets.org/poem/sounds-winter

Winter #SolsticePoem Prompts (via Deanna): https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZjzQCxAlSozwsiWI-KBWYmTv6AdFEME4V9AQwrATcnE/present?slide=id.p

So once again we lost a winter in stubborn memory ... — Joy Harlo

Coming inside that winter day my mother asked, where is your glove? and I had no answer to a simple question other than to point a bare hand towards the picture window with a view obscured by white winter squall, the storm that that had blinded me to the point to which I wasn't sure which apartment door was ours until I pulled the handle and heard the squeak and for nearly a week, my mother wouldn't speak of it to me, not forgotten, no, not until I bundled up and went back out to scour the ground for the many things we lose when we're just children trying to make our way home

Inspired by Grace by Joy Harlo https://poets.org/poem/grace-1

Winter #SolsticePoem Prompts (via Deanna): https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZjzQCxAlSozwsiWI-KBWYmTv6AdFEME4V9AQwrATcnE/present?slide=id.p

Shadows – hold their breath — Emily Dickinson

Dark, does too, and you – you breathe me in with these stars when you stare off like that into the sky

No need to wonder why

I'm perpetually forever falling, my cold comet tail of lost letters and discarded notes, of half-finished songs and broken poems - it all comes burning apart upon entry into atmosphere

Exhale, my love: Let the galaxy dust of these tiny disasters settle upon us – we'll gather the ashes into something new

inspired by There's A Certain Slant of Light by Emily Dickinson https://poets.org/poem/theres-certain-slant-light-258

Winter #SolsticePoem Prompts (via Deanna): https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZjzQCxAlSozwsiWI-KBWYmTv6AdFEME4V9AQwrATcnE/present?slide=id.p

go home and feed Upon thy Song — Ameen Rihani

How many of us in the audience nibbled on the notes the band of birds left behind when they were still singing, still swinging on the tension of the wire

And how not even one of us had even an inkling of tired in that fading light, the night kept us awake, and the sounds - how they carried us through towards home

And you bet we're still snacking on the melody left behind, the call, the response, the blazing fire reaching its way up into the rafters, the jazz club burning blue with song at dawn

inspired by The Philistine by Ameen Rihani https://poets.org/poem/philistine

Winter #SolsticePoem Prompts (via Deanna): https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZjzQCxAlSozwsiWI-KBWYmTv6AdFEME4V9AQwrATcnE/present?slide=id.p