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I have, for some time,: I have, for some time, believed that you are one of PostPoems' senior poets---senior not in number of years of membership (for what is a year but, simply, one planetary jaunt around the sun and back) but in the accomplishment of your Poetry.  This poem certainly fits in with that opinion of your work.  I believe you speak for many who are unable to speak for themselves; and you articulate emotional nuances---both good and bad, positive and negative---in ways that those for whom you speak can appropriate to explain to themselves their own emotional nuances, but in terms you provide for them.  Your Poetry is literate; timely (always of the now); and utterly necessary in the way it expresses those emotions for others---and gives them the comfort and certainty of hearing their own feelings expressed so well.  Some poets on this site write poems that belong in a museum; a few write poems that are so atrocious they deserve to be used to wrap fish or paper-train puppies; and a few Poets write the poems that nourish and sustain the soul . . . and you are in that particular group, as a nourisher and sustainer of souls for your readers.  If I had a hat on, I would tip my hat to you, Metaphorist, because you are one of the great ones on PostPoems.  But, in reality, I am just an old man half paralyzed in a lift chair while my body continues to sabatoge what is left of my life.  Still, from my chair I can applaud you in these words of sincere appreciation for your work.

More years ago than I care to: More years ago than I care to admit, I was compelled (in September following my high school graduation) to attend a college a couple of hours, by highway, from my home; and thus I had to live on campus.  But one of the unexpected advantages was to find that the campus landscape emphasized more lawn and flowerbeds than pavement.  It even had a small creek running through it; and its center was a tree-lined, flowery, area where none of the hallmarks of nature---including large stone, the creek itself, and such---had been removed to make way for expansion of the facility.  In our geographical area, during that particular "weather decade," autumns continued quite warm until nearly the end of October; and springs began to warm up by early to mid-April.  (The present global warming may have increased this temperate period.)  I then quickly discovered that a good many of the students attended class, or took meals in the dining hall, or made purchases in the bookstore entirely shoeless; mostly barefoot, some wearing just socks.  The trimmed lawns on either edge of the sidewalks that connected all of the academic buildings and the dorms received a lot of pedestrian traffic.  The college enforced very little of a dress code; and footwear was not addressed.  One simply had to be aware, when on the sidewalks, of broken glass, or discarded rings from opened pop-cans, or other debris.  In the four years I was there, I never heard of---much less seen---any foot injuries from this aspect of our residential life there.  Even off-campus, some of this was maintained:  On a balmy Friday afternoon, I once walked to the post office (nine miles, one way) with my flipflops more often in my hands than on my feet.  We had no beaches on large bodies of water, but we did have well trimmed lawns next to almost every sidewalk, and three temperate seasons each year, and flipflops to get over a few uncooperaitve patches.  [I apologize for the typos in the original; I think I have corrected all of them.]

Thank you, and Happy: Thank you, and Happy (belated) New Year to you, as well.

I like the ballad format with: I like the ballad format with which the narrative is presented.

Thank you very much for that.: Thank you very much for that.

Normally poems about winter: 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.

I am: I am but a self-centered simpleton; surrendering instead to welcome the cryptic community with open arms. It is volunteers like yourself that pave the road to those new-age revelations!