by Joe Winter | Mar 22, 2021 | Birth of Spring, Poems
a note to Hilary Tonight there are no flowers but a girl’s kindness.She brought them underhand: sometimes we kissed,sometimes we talked with worry and honesty,I who had been, she who would be a student. (We painted part of a dingy room together.)And now as pink clouds...
by Joe Winter | Feb 7, 2019 | Birth of Spring, Poems
Magdalen Tower Full square you stand aloft, a circling cloud behind your spires, a giant, which only the foreigner watches and admires. Rock-old, eternal, smiling, grand – from human toil aloof, of good a symbol, holding for impiety, reproof. In humble harmony...
by Joe Winter | Feb 11, 2019 | Birth of Spring, Poems
Ivy-Tendril An ivy-tendril climbing a wall felt the dust and waited for berries, and while waiting its soul was refreshed by the idle clamour of the lost snowflake… Gentle snow, fall through the ivy! But there is no ivy. The front of the college I attended was covered...
by Joe Winter | Feb 12, 2019 | Birth of Spring, Poems
Lady Harpsichord This is the way I think of you: robin-song soft and sweet, a breath of fresh air, and a handful or two of red and white seed. Written after Frances, my first girlfriend, decided it wasn’t on. There’s a story behind the title: I was staying with a...
by Joe Winter | Feb 14, 2019 | Birth of Spring, Poems
To Exile for Deirdre My life has been yours from an early age when first you keened a plainsong to my years, a prelude starred with lust and shot with rage, an aftermath of silence and slow tears. For when with quickened step I took the floor I tripped before...
by Joe Winter | Feb 14, 2019 | Birth of Spring, Poems
Villanelle Comfort the past with thoughts you do not know the mournful tenor of uncertainty, and shelter in the joy of saying so. The voice evokes a pain it dare not show. The mind contains a jewel it cannot see. Comfort the past with thoughts you do not know. Pain is...
