The Beginning of Winter

by Brian G. Phipps

All the light is slowly seeping from the world

and all of autumn’s works are come undone

as winter clouds the season’s end and dusk unfurls

its blanket on the subjects of the sun,

who in their tardiness to rally and to rouse the day

and as they thicken with the thought of cold and night

are hardening against the frost, which disarrays

their early beauty from the hold of light,

where shadows lengthen only in the longer hours

and nightfall never slips ahead of time

but strengthens in its proper place and daylight bowers

every living thing within its prime.

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Brian G. Phipps is the author of "Before the Burning Bush" (Univ. of St. Katherine Press, 2018), a collection of poems, and has published poetry in several literary journals, including St. Katherine Review, The Other Journal, and Anglican Theological Review. His [poem is/poems are] from a work in progress on the church year and the solar year as experienced by a person with seasonal affective disorder.