Report

Wintering

Carol Schiess

We’ve seen

the last hurried plunge of leaves,

the oak, ash, honey locust,

whose reds and yellows

have heightened the sky's bold blue

and held sunlight in the trees.

Color dies

with the passing of the leaves

and nature pushes time

into colder, briefer days.

Trees look older now,

stripped, shamed,

something pitiful revealed

in the collective reaching skyward

of frail limbs.

In winter,

a fearful presence

inhabits the lowering clouds,

waits beneath a hardened earth.

We, in that season,

are left without comfort,

as if, like the trees,

we have forgotten

what we know.

I'm not sure this is done. I've been messing with the first stanza this morning. There's something about the way I had it before that seems right, but maybe I'll just leave it this way for a while and look again later. But here's something of what my writing group said.

N said the wind couldn't be impatient. This stunned me, coming as it did from one who is a very good poet and who ought to know that the wind can be what I say it is,--within some limits, I suppose--and not just as a poet but as a person who "feels" the wind is gentle or disturbing or impatient. But I have taken it out and put it back in at least a dozen times because I'm not sure if it belongs, since I have used that word plunge, which I will keep.

S said she liked the word embers instead of ambers. (See an earlier version.) Okay, I thought, but not in this poem.

D said to change the verb "have" in the first stanza to "had." That makes sense, and I did it. But then I undid it, because I like "have" better.

Both S and D did not like the colors. I didn't feel good about them either. Too many modifiers, and I was especially worried about the fuchsia pinks. When D said the fuchsia pinks reminded her of a prom dress, then I knew why I was worried. They both said to leave the colors out entirely. I don't want prom dresses in the poem, but I did and do want some color there. I've added a few trees that were late in losing their leaves and whose leaves are red or yellow. We'll see about that.

D said to put the middle part together this way:

Color dies

with the passing of the leaves

and nature pushes time

into colder, briefer days.

In winter,

a fearful presence

inhabits the lowering clouds,

waits beneath a hardened earth.

Trees look older now,

stripped, shamed,

something pitiful revealed

in the collective reaching skyward

of frail limbs.

We, in that season,

are left without comfort,

as if, like the trees,

we have forgotten

what we know.

That makes sense, but not quite the sense I was thinking of when I wrote the poem. Besides, I think the words "colder" and "older" belong close together.

I took the last line off, about spring coming, because 1. perhaps the idea of spring is implicit, and that is enough, and 2. to leave some ambiguity there.

I came from the writing meeting very pleased. It's always a good thing when other writers take your writing seriously and offer their ideas. In the end, I weigh their ideas and, you know, make the final decision. As I said, I'm not sure this poem is finished.