My Favorite Winter Words

The Shortest Day

by Susan Cooper

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.

Things Poets Ponder

How trees look like old men.
What things are blue.
How words taste.
Whether a diphthong is one syllable or two.
Whether anyone will get the allusion to Shakespeare's 53rd sonnet.
Whether Eliot stole it first.
The difference between puce and magenta.
What rain puddles remind them of.
The sound of one dog barking.
Whether to imagine bagpipes or flutes.
When to stop alliterating.
Whether the magpie image will offend mother.
Shapes.
How similar things are different.
And vice versa.
The pleasures of paradox.
Why the line breaks before the direct object.
What depends on a red wheelbarrow.
Grecian urns.
Larks, nightingales and ravens.
Why April is cruel.
When to borrow and when to steal.
King James' English.
Nursery Rhymes.
Drivel and doggerel.
Time, eternity and due dates.

~Marilyn McEntyre