GRIEF Poem: The Penny Dawn, by Julie Cullinane

In December comes the poetry
If human suffrage was a month of the calendar
The examination of the year’s bruises
Veins punctured just below the skin
Threads of green and blue ready for appraisal and disposal
Against the promise of a new year

All the late-night dog walks down cold sidewalks
Mornings spent chipping ice
While car exhaust plumes clouds into the sky
Holiday social anxiety
Forced indoors with family
Wrapping our bones in down and layers
Realizing someday we will all die

It is December
And I am no longer 17
My son is 17
Which puts me further and further away from it
He is 17 in the glorious ways
he doesn’t understand the power of his youth
How it surrounds him like a halo, delicious and pompous
How I would devour it, take it from him if offered
I watch him shovel the snow on the deck
Gangly, irritated and tall
He throws a snowball at his little brother
He smiles

December’s gift
Is waking restless in the penny dawn
porch door open inches to fit your nose and eyes through
Breathing in the just-post snowstorm
Air in the sacred silence of an early purple New England morning
Crackling cold is the lens bringing the glass covered lawn into sharp focus
the secret smell of new fallen snow
That only we know

Author: poetryfest

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