New Year's Poem

by Margaret Avison

The Christmas twigs crispen and needles rattle 

Along the window-ledge. 

             A solitary pearl 

Shed from the necklace spilled at last week’s party 

Lies in the suety, snow-luminous plainness 

Of morning, on the window-ledge beside them.   

And all the furniture that circled stately 

And hospitable when these rooms were brimmed 

With perfumes, furs, and black-and-silver 

Crisscross of seasonal conversation, lapses 

Into its previous largeness. 

             I remember   

Anne’s rose-sweet gravity, and the stiff grave 

Where cold so little can contain; 

I mark the queer delightful skull and crossbones 

Starlings and sparrows left, taking the crust, 

And the long loop of winter wind 

Smoothing its arc from dark Arcturus down 

To the bricked corner of the drifted courtyard, 

And the still window-ledge. 

             Gentle and just pleasure 

It is, being human, to have won from space 

This unchill, habitable interior 

Which mirrors quietly the light 

Of the snow, and the new year.

In (Re)view

Nikon FE2, 50mm

Nikon D3100, 35mm