Well winter has arrived awhile ago with buckets full of snow. Manson Solomon writes a poem about our winter of discontent that should depress you all, and make you pine for the fragrant breath of spring. Solomon writes the LYRICAL:

“I emerged from the womb with a mission to be a writer with a large trust fund.  Said trust fund being inexplicably absent, I took the road more traveled, {acquiring graduate degrees in Economics, Psychology and Philosophy from the London School of Economics, Columbia and Harvard,] engaging in various academic, artistic and entrepreneurial pursuits — in New York, London, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, Nova Scotia, Wellesley, Cambridge —  I am currently a member of the Bagel Bards of Somerville, Mass.”

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WINTER HAS COME

Winter has come

quietly

tumbling white

out of the grey

grey sky.

Trees stand

to attention

pointing blindly.

Scattered clusters

of dead oak leaves

snagged on the outstretched fingers,

orange-brown tatters, cling

to the stiff, empty coat-racks

stark witnesses

to the creep

of the insidious white

along the bark’s crevices.

Blanched bladelets accept

without protest

the enveloping ice

until they disappear

entombed

deep-frozen.

Forsaken by the sun,

starved into submission,

the earth yields

to the suffocating pillow of snowflakes,

life drained from its desiccated veins

it draws a final sigh,

exhales

and lies still

in its white, white silent shroud.

No birds, no squirrels, no blooms,

no song.

No gentle breezes stirring the

odorless air.

Only the steady drift

of the accumulating crystals

smothering,

embalming

the colorless earth.

Nothing moves.

– Manson Solomon

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To have your work considered for the Lyrical send it to:
Doug Holder, 25 School St.; Somerville, MA 02143.
dougholder@post.harvard.edu