ROBERT VIVIAN

Every Winter Darkness

Dark winter sky, cold dark and still with drifting clouds, dark morning, waking in the dark, all winter darkness and listening for the river far away, for the fish of my dreams to rise and flash of lateral lines, bright fish in cold clear water all the days of my life, this hour, this cold dark morning and mantra of winter and snow sculpted by wind and rounded by moan, cold dark morning and my love far away, I wake in the dark and the god within, the listening heart beat, the cold in my fingers and listening for words and for what is beneath the words already spoken, already written, black ink on the page of winter and the low hum and urgency, electromagnetic field and the mercy of a sentence that goes on forever, that is star-touched and gaining, threadbare for utterance, for the cold dark starkness holding the stars together glistening and raw as I see the fish again and how it surges in my blood in a desperate run downstream and I go with it each time and feel the line like some bright thread holding me tightly to the wildness of this world, the world we do not deserve, the world that holds and cradles us and the dark morning sky, the dark solemnity and outline of denuded branch and a drum beat sounding and I a wisp of sigh rising above the river before dawn, one man, one heartbeat and the love that can’t be said or seen, the love that taps the counter with a polished spoon as reflected light fills its nimbus crown with mouthful of greatest praise and nothing to swallow but dark morning sky, dark morning sky and the hard patience of winter, enduring for every one of us across a windswept field and cursive of blowing snow, cold dark love letter written by the earth and sent wherever the wind will take it, torn white bird spinning and looping in the cold dark air. 

Robert Vivian’s collection of prose poems Mystery My Country will be published in 2016.