Winter Morning To-do List

Poem No. 162

I’ve written before that sometimes I repeat myself when writing poems. Well, today I repeat myself when posting them. 😊

I first posted this poem last December, as my second-ever poetry post, well before most you had found my little newsletter (🎉). I like writing winter poems, and this is one of my favorites. Since the weather here turned so cold this week, I’ve been thinking about winter and was reminded of this poem, so I thought I’d share it again.

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Winter Morning To-do List

You will grow old and die,
but first, today, you must
press a palm to the frosted window

and burn an absence there
in the shape of your hand,

using nothing more
than the mere fire
of your existence.

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(If you’re new here, I perhaps should have warned you about my love of melancholy…)

In my poetry practice, poems are not static things. My poetry journal is a word garden, and I spend a lot of time there weeding, pruning, and helping things grow. This poem has changed form very slightly, since I last shared it. If you’re curious about the evolution, please check out the original post. (You can even like that post, and mess with the algorithms a little! 👻)

Thanks for reading. I hope this finds you with the fire of your existence burning hot and bright,
~ A

P.S. — I may be the world’s clumsiest marketer, and among the top, say, three or four shyest humans on the internet. So this newsletter mainly grows when you share it. It feels like a team effort, and this week we passed 225 subscribers (go team!). (And when I say ‘we’, I mean ‘you’. I did nothing.) Thank you. 🙏

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