Poems for Winter

From the Sonnets of Antonio Vivaldi

Winter (Concerto No. 4 in F minor)

Allegro non molto

Frozen and shivering in the icy snow,
Under the battering of a terrible wind
Run stamping your feet every moment,
Teeth chattering in the cold.

Largo

Spend calm and happy moments by the fire
While outside the rain sprinkles everyone.

Allegro

Walking on the ice with hesitant steps,
By being careful, lest you fall.
Jump in haste, slip, and fall to the ground,
Get back on the ice and run,
In case the ice cracks and opens.
To hear, leaving their screened house, Sirocco,B
oreas, and all the winds in battle...
It’s winter, but it brings joy.

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Poem from Michigan Writers

The Dead of Winter—
Anne-Marie Oomen

–are living. Hello old friends who warned us
of ice, of careful steps, how a surface
opens, and how fragile life is. You
also trusted the truth of winds,
lived their fierce outcries, felt the battle
in their joys. Oh, you must have
have had a soft spot for our nights,
those solstice darkenings one must
embrace, those living at winter’s heart
as you do. Now, stand with me at
the house door, village bells ringing with
ancient thrum and cold. Let us step
with caution born of love, walk the quiet dunes,
befriend the spirits of both light and night.

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Poem from Michigan Writers

Winter into Spring 
By Robb Astor

within the dark and solemn pause
a grey light grows
across a vast white plain
a steady moan a late dawn

the overcast seems interminable
but look— a fissure
one edge bleeding into the next
a sky so thick with red

the bay heaves
fractures race from side to side
the shattered ice is thrust ashore

every day it thaws
the snow diminishes
every night it freezes