There’s a brutality to this winter wind as if it’s personal, payback for some insult we’ve long forgotten. The day gives up its light like a mother her child, the long gray mourning in which they veil themselves. The house is a single flame of heat rising from acreage of static grass, the voice of ice muscling deep into the earth. Mortality is meaningless in the full descent of night. Life hibernates, the wind with its shoulder against the curve of time, stalling its footstep. Eighty-three passages through winter’s solstice. Eighty-three times the shivering off of frost, his blood once more sweeping forth the moments. Eyes yet shut to the dawn. /////
Ken Holland has had work widely published in such journals as Rattle, Tulane Review, Southwest Review, The Galway Review and Tar River. He was awarded first place in the 2022 New Ohio Review poetry contest, judged by Kim Addonizio, and was a finalist in the 2022 Lascaux Prize in Poetry. His book length manuscript, Summer of the Gods, was a semi-finalist in the 2022 Able Muse book competition as well as Word Work’s 2022 Washington Prize. He’s been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. He lives in the mid-Hudson Valley of New York. More by visiting his website: ww.kenhollandpoet.com
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