Alicia Ostriker: “Winter Darkness”
WINTER DARKNESS
For Pat Fargnoli
The laundry is folded
the dishes are washed
it is evening
darkness cradles us
we turn on the tv
to distract ourselves
from whatever we fear
is it the sinkhole of poverty
the cage of sickness
the crack in the teacup
that leads to the lane of the dead
I am following just behind you
studying your gait
how you kept going
creating loveliness from all of that
right to the end
how you engaged the seasons
even the winter darkness
even the loneliness
writing everything down
so that now I have
a map to follow
through darkness and old snow
your bootprints showing
where to go
Alicia Ostriker is a poet and critic. Her most recent poetry collections are Waiting for the Light (2017) and The Volcano and After: Selected and New Poems 2002-2019 (2020). As a critic she is the author of Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America (1986) and other books on poetry and on the Bible. She lives with her husband in New York City and was the New York State Poet Laureate in 2018-2021.