IN JANUARY
By Gerard J. Cambridge



Things promised are appreciated most:
And that is why this beam
(Entering as it does
This month, my kitchen window),
Celestial magician
Making of this pane a door,
Charging to bright pale gold
The crumbs of the breakfast toast,
Marrying, far-travelled,
In brilliance this white page,
Delights me, I think, more
Than it will do again, and did, before,
In the blander
Summers of its taller age.

For here the stone is all uncarved yet,
And here the canvas is untouched;
Still to be written the marvellous verses,
Unuttered yet frustration's curses,
And undenied by actual hillocks
The inner ranges, cherished, we must hide!

COLD SHAKESPEARE


Shall I compare thee to a winter’s day?
Thou art more icy and refrigerate:
Warm winds do make the snowman’s fast decay,
And winter’s lease hath yet quite short a fate;
Rarely too bleak the breath of winter curls,
And not for long her azure face is banned;
And even blizzards sometimes cease their swirl,
By happy chance or South Wind’s easing hand;
But thy eternal winter shall not thaw,
Nor lose possession of spikes thou growest;
Nor shall warmth say thou entered through his door,
When a stiffened mind you grind and showest:
So long as men can seethe, or feet can flee,
So long lives thou, and thou gives strife to me.

And because of global warming, and we don't have any yet ....


New Year Snow
by Frances Horowitz


For three days we waited,
a bowl of dull quartz for sky.
At night the valley dreamed of snow,
lost Christmas angels with dark-white wings
flailing the hills.
I dreamed a poem, perfect
as the first five-pointed flake,
that melted at dawn:
a Janus time
to peer back at guttering dark days,
trajectories of the spent year.
And then snow fell.
Within an hour, a world immaculate
as January's new-hung page.
We breathe the radiant air like men new-born.
The children rush before us.
As in a dream of snow
we track through crystal fields
to the green horizon
and the sun's reflected rose.






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