“The poem is a charm; it must actively cast a spell on the reader now. If it doesn’t, it fails, whether the poem is about a face that launched a thousand ships or about a woman standing in a line outside a prison wall or about plums in the icebox. That freshness of speech ravishes the human in us. 

I don’t see any value in asking whether poetry can exist outside of the political. Poetry is not about an event. It is the event. Art is the resistance of complacency: It always stands in opposition to numbness. 

That is why it just doesn’t die, poetry—despite so many death notices. It is always there, waking us up when we get numb, poking us in the eye.”

~Ilya Kaminsky, from “An Interview with Ilya Kaminsky,” by Garth Greenwell in "Poets & Writers”

Morning ritual must now include shoveling and salting the ice. Charlie does not enjoy standing around waiting in the cold. Suzi goes inside, doesn’t come back out. The story of this landscape is ice. And, it’s lovely. Not on the granite steps, but on the trees and all the grasses, and on the Charles, it’s creeping back, a slush, calming greenish ice. A big blue sky, and evergreens in glitter. I have prepared for a busy morning, the Wednesday morning writers, a prompt for writing about beauty, early memories, what is beauty? When did we notice it first, and where? How did we define it? So, all the writers write on this theme, and I am aware, now, this morning, there is a half moon above the snowy ice in the wide clear sky of blue and I am under it, grateful to be alive and in the cold-cheeked morning. It’s a day to feel the busyness, the crush of activity and commitment, and to take it slow, moment by moment, trusting it will all get done, all that needs to be done will be done. Every year, this week before Christmas, the familiar stress and short days. The moon is always in the sky. I can see so much, not all, but so much of it this morning. Enough.