Winter Window

Winter Window
by Gideon Burton

I have been watching at the window, still
enough for tides of moonwash moistening
the cooling glass, the slowing hours, the still
arranging silences. I'm listening.
Above in bloodied trails hot comets score
the flimsy fabric, screaming light. But no
unwintering, no auguring the core
of cold, no pause against the piling snow--
this flow of every evening, evening
to one, to waiting at a window framed
with stains of weary wonder hovering
in something said, in something pure and named
and washing me or watching me or spilled
and spelled with mercies tendered as He will.

Image: Creative Commons licensed through Flickr - Randy OHC

Snow Light

Snow Light
by Gideon Burton

I think this time the snow was made of light
itself. Perhaps, if I may speculate,
when sunrays linger in the starry height
between the moon and time grown late,
they shudder in the cold of blackened time,
then shakes themselves to crystaled shards of ice,
to frost more delicate than autumn rime,
to flaking whispers, grains of hollow rice.
For as the quiet snow began to fall
today, it seemed to have no weight, no mass,
no juicy core to squeeze into a ball.
No sooner held, it disappeared as fast.
     This snow was never water if I'm right;
     it came from star fields dense with shadowed light.

Photo: flickr - IceNineJon

Ice Dams

I was shoveling the slush and ice from my roof at about 11:00pm tonight, trying to fend off the leaks already starting in my bedroom from another year of ice dams.

Ice Dams
by Gideon Burton

The snow has had some time to settle in:
transforming from its dry and wispy flakes,
it moistens as a warmer day begins,
lies heavy on my roof until it aches.
The heat that rises underneath the shingles
turns snow to slush that creeps toward the edge.
But suddenly, with night, the cold air mingles,
refreezing slush into an icy ledge.
And soon the water pools above the eaves
and works its way to layers better dry.
The snowfall stops, the wetness never leaves,
and rots my roof until I want to cry.
     Two winters ice dams have brought down my ceiling.
     Come Spring, up on that roof you'll find me kneeling.

Photo: flickr - BoSoxBrent

Snow More

Snow More
by Gideon Burton

Continuing its mute descent, the cloth
Of shredded winter nestles snugly warm
Amid the creases, washed in silent froth
Against the chaos, cool and stingless swarms.
A paint of latent wetness, patient, still
Accumulating feathers, humid-dry,
A blank and perfect order as they spill
Into the cooling furnaces of why.
This afternoon I kick my booted feet
Along what might have been a sidewalk or
An oily road. Such purity, they meet
Unmuddied, curious, entranced by more
Of fluff, of powder, milky wading ways.
The snow will go, yet something solid stays.

Photo: flickr - Christopher S. Penn

Then Comes an End

Then Comes an End
by Gideon Burton

An end, conclusion, coming to a close
despite the things unfinished and undone;
though I was just beginning to compose,
the moon arises, westward dims the sun.
An end, a destination, something sought
outside of range, beyond all present means
for which I've lost each time the fight was fought;
the scaffolding is rusting as it leans
toward an end, concluding, destiny
in crooked planks and meters, nothing spanned
across the chasms through the density
of smoky hopes for distant planets manned.
     To come at last to know the proper end
     makes everything toward it rushing bend.

Photo: flickr - Kuzeytac

It Will Be Colder

It Will Be Colder
by Gideon Burton

It will be colder, slightly, as the wind,
the arctic wind, across the tundra sweeps
the errant snow, its icy fingers thin
and bony, grasping at my spine for keeps--
the day that Jesus comes, awaited day
when terror comes as rain and grace as rain
as well. Descending, silent, louder than
creation, bidding ends begin; when pain,
as grain and chaff, is subject to his fan.
But neither here nor there, I will attend
the waves of choice and chance both strong and still:
the rising tension, light that burns and bends,
and what goes empty I will stop and fill.
     It may be colder but I will be warm,
     awake to what will sleep when comes that storm.

Photo: flickr - the trial

Christmas, Present

Christmas, Present
by Gideon Burton

Arrayed in papered glory round the tree
And spilling well across the living room,
The presents promise no small share of glee
For children, banishing all pouty gloom.
And yet, I would forego it all, the craze
Of shopping, wrapping, yuletide in a box,
Because, I fear, it has become a haze,
A hindrance keeping us with ribboned locks
From knowing little Jesus meek and mild,
From holding Christ the Savior in our hearts.
The children seek not Bethlehem to find
But batteries to make their Go Kart start.
     Already we are distanced from that place;
     No need to cloud the radiance of His face.

Photo: flickr - Striking Photography by Bo Insogna

Winter Watch

Winter Watch
by Gideon Burton

In magnitudes, degrees upon degrees
upon the seasoned winter walkways, dark
with dimming, lit with only feeble sparks.
In gratitude, again upon my knees,
from magnitudes, degrees upon degrees
within the cycle's broad and graceful arc
whose slimming ribbons trace their fading marks
in altitudes that soar above the trees
who stand as sentinels in silhouette
against a tawny dawn. Against the slow
encroachments of the ombre skeins of sky
I watch the crystal snowflakes pirouette
in silence, needing never now to know
just where they fall, or how they fall, or why.

Photo: flickr - ckphotography

Snow

Yes, this is my house and my car, snowed in from today's storm. I took the day off to go skiing. Good choice.

Snow
by Gideon Burton

Like goopy icing sugaring all the roads,
like nimble cumulus accumulating,
eclipsing acres with its sopping loads.
Like cotton candy with the wind inflating
Like Slurpee slush that's sucked until it's white
and dense. It crowns the fence posts, wires, and signs
with puffy ornaments, puts out of sight
the dirty asphalt, browning grass. The lines
between things meld and melt with crystal glue.
A block away a team of men are pushing
a silver van. Then with a cheer its through
and others follow, spraying patterned slushing.
     But best of all, the mountains guard this spice,
     a kind of manna, heaven's store of rice.

Snow

Snow
by Gideon Burton

Throughout the numbing night soft silt descends
in milky grains upon the open fields.
Soon morning strikes on dancing diamonds, ends
the stillness: frantic micro-prisms yield
kinetic shards of bursting, breaking light -- 
so light a sunrise breath ungravities
the airborne silken pearls to lazy flight
in search of yet uncovered cavities
where Winter's probing brushes haven't smeared
the rigid resin frosts whose fragile casts
enmesh the evergreens in latticed beards.
Yet crystals snap, and ices melt at last.
     I face the sky as heaven shreds in pieces,
     and mourn to know that snowing ever ceases.

Photo: flickr - DaveKav

What Winter Now?

What Winter Now?
by Gideon Burton

Amid what winter now? And why so weak?
Stand longer at that window, watch awhile
until the street lamps turn to stars. I speak
as one who's paced within the snow compiled
in dirtied layers washing greys and grit
across cold spaces, stupid with the cold.
And I have paused to ask the point of it,
and wished I would awaken, hot and bold.
But now I join these witnesses who voice
the silent sudden warming wonders dense
about us, deepened by each watcher's choice
to fully feel divinity's suspense.
     We watch with you throughout each blackened night,
     beside you through the winter of your fight.

Photo: flickr - perisho

White Elephant

White Elephant
by Gideon Burton

A velvet Elvis bought in Mexico;
a stack of dusty, five-inch floppy disks;
a moonshine still, a book to learn Morse code--
these are the Christmas party's gifting risks.
I've taken home the bowling ball named Sherry
while lucky neighbors kept a better prize.
I've swapped the towel embroidered DIRTY HAIRY;
a "CLOWNS KILL PEOPLE" tee shirt seemed more wise.
The diaper filled with Tootsie Rolls was crass,
much better was the box that hid a kitten,
or maybe Coca-Cola in a flask,
but not that apple basket with all bitten.
     Collecting kitsch, a sort of Christmas sport.
     Sometimes I would prefer to have a wart.

Photo: flickr - cypheroz

Winter

Winter
by Gideon Burton

The argument of Winter settling in,
the light receding earlier, the wind
as weak as grasses browning in the thin
decay of foliage. How do we begin
retreating? Layering layers on our skin,
and waiting for the earth to slowly spin
its tilting path back where the warmth has been
direct, unsubtle, never wearing thin
but garish: saturated saffron rays
that boil or scorch or scald with burning heat;
high noons to span more hours than a day,
and lava pavement melting down our feet.
     Outside, the night descends at half past four.
     Inside, a second blanket, then one more.

Photo: flickr - lensfodder

Fall

I ask my students to write sonnets. This is one of those. Thanks for letting me post it here, Taylor. This is her photo, too.

Fall
by Taylor McComb

The sky above my head has grown profound
For Fall is framed in varied shades of grey.
The time it spends here rivals time away,
And only cold is sharper than the sound
Of beating wings, and leaves churning about.
But dappled ground will give to frosty slate
And all the beauty heretofore I’d hate
Will quickly turn on heel and hurry out.
The taste of autumn on my lips will fade
Misfortunately settling in will be
My hunger for it, searching for the key
To lock out ache of winter in the shade.
     My yearning for a season like my home
     May ask too much for one who likes to roam.

Autumn Sky

Autumn Sky
by Gideon Burton

The celibacy of the autumn sky
recedes so easily with nudging hues,
with tissued wisps of clouds that downward fly
across the fading azure, darkened blues.
The night is coming, wet against the leaves
that paste the windows and the quiet streets.
It is already nesting under eaves
and through the fields of corn and ripened wheat.
I must preserve my vows to know this chill,
to blend my hair with breezes as I walk
along the lake, to let the season spill
its ambers and its skies of winging flocks.
     Above, the shadows germinate and grow,
     and swelling stars pour smoky light below.

Photo: flickr - spodzone

Unleaving

Unleaving
by Gideon Burton
a response to Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Spring & Fall" (below)

Not grieving, no, though wistful at the haste
with which the paper leaf-gold scatters, bruised
with ruddy blushing once the crisping taste
of orange Autumn smacks the morning, fused
with musty rusts, with browning greens, with all
the sudden-subtle transformations stark
along the gilded leavings steeped in Fall.
And though the season leans toward the dark,
these worlds of wanwood leafmeal never lie,
but ever promise Sparrow Watcher heats
the coldest air with what can never die,
though guessing ghosts might spook their own retreat.
     This is the golden autumn birth we're born for:
     to so expire, there's nothing left to mourn for.


Spring & Fall
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Photo: flickr - kern.justin

The Thresholds

The Thresholds
by Gideon Burton

Events conspired to carry me toward
that seam of sky hemmed tight along the crest
where heaving greens touch cloudscapes. Can I soar
above the summer, let my breathing press
fresh indigos and stain my waiting eyes?
And as the sunward-reaching foliage stakes
its weight along the red-black earth, unsize
the curved horizon as the eager ether cakes
with sedimentary mists until the break,
the edge, the terminus of airy space?
Could I return, unable not to shake
from all that's charged my skin and stinging face?
     I watch. I'm still. It rushes to my reach:
     the thresholds, gusting time to close the breach.

Photo: Martin Gommel

Fall Resolve

Fall Resolve
by Gideon Burton

I have too many days, too many skies
let go (attuned to antiseptic walls
or gaudy pixels easily despised) --
whole sunsets, clouds in pastel waterfalls
that etched in silence canvases of awe;
the silken weave of waning summer nights.
How could I face away? What wicked claw
has snared me in its clutches, as the bright
fluorescence of an August evening passed
into the mellow hues of breezy dusk?
So quickly fades the summer season, fast
upon us falls the winter, empty husk.
     The western sky has summoned with its shades;
     I’ll compass its dark glow before it fades.

Photo: flickr - joiseyshowaa

Crickets' Code

Crickets' Code

by Gideon Burton

I hope you'll wait with me; there's more to tell:

Each pulse and hush of Autumn rhythms down

the Wasatch canyons, breezing aspens swell

their flat medallions, amber evenings drown

the western facing mountains rippling red

in crevices of leaving leaves, the cool

of air sustains the time we thought had bled

to Winter weariness, unwinds the spools

of muscled hurry, welcomes us to slow

reception of the crickets' code conveyed

across the dozing decades in their flow

of seasoned seasons, quiet and unswayed.

     I told you it would come. Now watch it pass:

     a fallen golden world strewn on the grass.

Photo: flickr - //amy//

September Stays

September Stays
by Gideon Burton

Each year the tilting planet spills the seasons:
the colored breezes run in altered hues;
the oceans slosh into September's reasons,
persuasive as the aspen trees' chartreuse.
Some years my sons and I have piled our leaves
to mounds of paper florins, rich with must.
Our little dogs we've tossed with football ease
upon this Autumn bedding (gently thrust).
They yapped their giggling, seemed to ask for more,
but we had thrown ourselves and scattered all.
How elegant the yard, its leafy floor
abused when raking ends our playful brawl.
     Turn earth, turn time, refreeze and thaw again;
     the seasons stay that wisely we have spent.