J. Barrie Shepherd

I’m still looking, scanning,
skipping right to the end at times,
or settling for the gist on the first page,
reading—more selectively across the years—...

Even before D Day
and the great emptying out
of England's fields and hedgerows
—one vast and camouflaged parking lot—
onto the harrowed beaches of the French,...

and we're off again
with forehead freshly smeared
and spirit seared anew by
memories of dust, rumors of all
or nothing up ahead.
These frigid days and weeks lean...

So here we go again.
The grit of darkened seasons past
between the eyes, across the brow.
The purple cloths of grief,
tall cloistered candles, numbered days....

These Yorkshire fells and dales
appear ever to be falling away,
toppling from Emily’s wuthering heights
into wide accommodating valleys...

Close to an hour more of light
since December’s solstice stood
the calendar on edge, balancing
my dwindling days between the here
and the hereafter.
This late January thaw...

These midwinter days that bridge
Epiphany to Lent
can seem anything but ordinary
as the steady waxing light reflects
across old December’s glaze of ice,...

Spring did not officially arrive
until two this afternoon,
or so the weatherspinner had informed us,
so that when, at morning prayer,
my still wintered words were interrupted...

Even in Maine’s rain and fog I catch them,
often in pairs, or waiting, patient, perched on
a scarcely bending twig of our aged forsythia,
then working the window box petunias...

This time of year,
what with bulbs bursting
through to light, crashing
headlong into color, puff balls
of sudden pink, cloud clumps
of eager violet and white crowding,...