Winter sun sets on 2022,
a year of giving up and giving in,
of taking a precautionary cane
on snowy winter walks—but walking still,
a daily battle with the world’s despair.
Against the drumbeat of the nightly news,
a pastor-politician voices dreams:
“Democracy is the political
enactment of a spiritual idea:
the sacred worth of all human beings.”
Two days’ thaw—and in the back yard, beneath
soft snow, mounded like mulch, I see next year’s
tulips, radishes and arugula,
see planting, voting, never giving up:
hope drips from eaves to light a winter day.
Soon must the winter of our discontent,
this cold dark night of war and frozen hearts,
give way to sunrise of the dawning year,
and spring of dreams and bold imagining.
Fragments is written by Mary Turck, who lives and writes in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Fragments 