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A melodious reverie that encompasses both the tender and harsh, the sweet and bitter, the mollifying and the terrifying. Like a love-hate relationship; perhaps we can learn a thing or two from the humble crocus. We have them in hanging pots on the balcony rails and they are leafy green in the freezing present waiting for the moment they burst forth even before winter is totally gone. Always something to look forward to. Thanks for sharing.

Normally poems about winter are not that impressive to me, as I think of myself as more of an Autumn poet.  But, just as any poem of Patricia's shatters restrictions and recalibrates both one's assumptions and one's expectations, this poem is not the type of winter poem I am used to, and therefore it is exceptional, to this reader, not only in a literary and poetic way, but also in the personal part where the soul dwells.

   Very close to its own conclusion, the poem names itself for us:  "just one more star / to the north."  Now, in common conversation, that phrase "just one more" is usually spoken in tedium, or in distress, or in boredom (none of which, be assured, apply to, or are present in, this poem).  In this poem, "just one more star" is a second chance to those of us who, through the inanity or mundane-ness of our usual quotidian lines, have become misdirected.  And, for many of us, winter is a season that can be bleak, dismal, and distressing, especially after the Christmas through New Year Holiday is over.  This poem converts winter's symbols ("singular / snow art in / a unified blizzard") into signs of hopefulness and joy, while also declaring "separation a farce."

   This poem caused me to remember the Christmas break (December 23, 1970 to January 3, 1971) of my seventh grade year.  That was a difficult year for me, primarily due to bullying, and to hormones (which I did not understand, and were not adequately explained by any authority figure).  Some particularly strong snowstorms had continually assailed our vicinity; but, whereas many adults complained about the weather and its effect on the holiday, I rejoiced in the break.  That particular season, that year, made itself mine, because I had little else to which I could look forward.  I was allowed to play outdoors in long intervals, ending only when my outer clothing had become soaked; and I spent the in-between times, indoors, reading novels (I remember slogging my way through some of Dickens' works) while seated as near to a window as possible to that I still seemed to be out in the winter weather.  That winter spoke to me, in ways I cannot now articulate, in ways that this poem speaks to me, and to every other reader who will approach it, as it points out what is an "illusion for the ages" that will give way to "just one more star / to the north" which will then guide us through "just a few / dreams / before dawn."  And dawn, be it winter or summer, is always a time of hopefulness, just as sunset, winter or summer, is a time of closure and satisfaction.

   Because of its meterological nature, and other social aspects (like unfortunate increases in depression, and senses of discontent and disatisfaction), winter has not been accorded the same respect given the other three seasons (and I say this only as a single reader, speaking from my own reading experience).  Yet even someone like Stephen King, whom (I sincerely believe) no one will nominate as a great Poet, used the winter season, in his collection of four novellas, Four Seasons, for one of his most hopeful, most life-affirming tales---one which can still bring me to tears.  Even King recognized that the winter season is not all negative.  This is what Patricia's poem tells us.

    I shall conclude with this thought.  Patricia's collection, here at PostPoems, is a developing cosmology---at least as significant as Lucretius' great poem, De Rerum Natura, or the several Aetia poems of Callimachus; and, I shall assert here, even more important than those ancient precedents.  The Welsh Poet, Gwenallt, whose work I cannot read in its original language, wrote a poem about a Welsh theologian, John E. Daniel.  Gwenallt described Daniel's scholarly work like a large home, in which certain rooms are furnished with certain metaphors and similes to describe the various facets of Daniel's teaching.  For this comment, I am going to borrow this metaphor from Genallt (with whom I feel an affinity as, while I was afflicted with the worst flu I had ever experiencedm which peaked on December 24th, 1968, Gwenallt was being called to Heaven).  Some poets build a new house, usually a shack or a cottage, with each poem they write.  Poets of the greatest grandeur, however, Poets of Patricia's calibre, raise the walls, ceiling, and floor of their poetic homes and then begin to furnish them from the inside out, furnishing each room according to a theme, perhaps, or according to some other floorplan, but always consistent with that theme or floorplan.  So what you are seeing, in this winter poem and in any other poem she posts, is the furnishing of a great house of Poetry, or, if you like, a temple (I prefer, in respect to Gwenallt's metaphor, to keep it as a house; at least in this comment).  Every line is a functional part of the overall plan; there are no throwaways, no discards.  There are no walls slanting out of plumb, no corners that are obligue, the floors are level, and the ceiling does not admit leaks.  I doubt that I shall live to see its completion in this world; but the edifice, as it is now, is magnificent in its grandeur.  And this poem, by being part of the whole, proves the substance and the consistence of the whole, as any other of her poems do.