When the ship began rocking and rolling, I would slip away—done with strolling

Steady heat, dough rising

the fragile, edgy place we pretend to believe is constant even as the cliffs fall into the sea

But aren’t they in the moments when we call to each other as if at Julian’s veiled window never knowing the others’ true face?

No one cares that he is beautiful and delicate.

We won’t dwell on the way overnight lows and ice reliquaried spring

I could never have imagined how beautiful a barn could be

A fool’s brain fumbling for order—like the old door frames of Paris untouched by the war

The way it makes me feel when I watch her at the piano, the dimple that arrives with her smile. What will I pass on to her?

We favour things that are blue: corn flowers, corn cockle, lobelia.

“Maybe we could adopt,” he said one night they were spooning in bed, and while she didn’t respond, her body remained soft and warm, nested inside his.

Listen: Blue Jays squabble in a language not heard all winter, chickadees and nuthatches crowd around the feeder,

It took a while to notice, but over the last five years or so, I have lived in the Psalms.

And yet, here is not only quiet acceptance but joy: of thirty variations, only three in a minor key.

Eliot’s withered hyacinths perfuming trash, or Thomas raging like a man looking for a fight in the dying of the light.

Let’s drive to eastern Oregon and glimpse a ring of fire eclipse with cowboy friends a maiden’s hair lopped off and cast away with a sorrow deep as a golden prayer bowl.

We move together because the planets do

I thought the scattered hay was from a fairy tale, a maiden’s hair lopped off and cast away with a sorrow deep as a golden prayer bowl.

My eyes flit back to the square yellow figure doing its antics above me.

A Winter note from our Editor!