Kindergarten of the Heart
What do you call this mint-green winter?
The one fine snow lies thin as lint on the landscape
and roses still bud and bloom—a tender, tentative
wintergreen season, holding autumn and spring
in equal measure, a dying and a generation.
Our hair echoes by eye the frosted grasses.
Our hearts that long ago found causes not to love
now struggle as an infant strains to speak.
Shy, we do not touch, walking our trackless hinterland,
tied with some new, invisible cincture…
Dippers bob in the cold stream-water, totally at home.
Copyright Celia McCulloch
What do you call this mint-green winter?
The one fine snow lies thin as lint on the landscape
and roses still bud and bloom—a tender, tentative
wintergreen season, holding autumn and spring
in equal measure, a dying and a generation.
Our hair echoes by eye the frosted grasses.
Our hearts that long ago found causes not to love
now struggle as an infant strains to speak.
Shy, we do not touch, walking our trackless hinterland,
tied with some new, invisible cincture…
Dippers bob in the cold stream-water, totally at home.
Copyright Celia McCulloch
Celia……. I must comment on the various subtle strands which lie at the heart of this magnificent poem. Ostensibly a descriptive piece about the margins of the seasons, aspects of Spring and Winter, there are other undercurrents found in the second verse. I'd like to think there is still some hope in the straining 'to speak' and the 'tied' cincture but there is also hesitation, as in 'Shy, we do not touch', the 'causes not to love'. The equal measure of the seasons and the cycle of dying and regeneration reflected also in the tense balance of the relationship. Brilliant piece…..Vernon Goddard
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