Winter Sonnet, and: AirTrain Newark, Mid-December, 4:15
- Winter Sonnet, and: AirTrain Newark, Mid-December, 4:15
Winter Sonnet
Why not take a lesson from these trees?They don’t fault themselvesfor stinting the neighborhood of leaves;They don’t even apologize;instead, they concentrate on clearing spacefor whatever has the wherewithal to thrive.Perhaps the trick is just to step asideand keep your eye out for a hint of grace,which—who am I to argue?—could arriveat any time at all if it has roomwith a modicum of luck or fortitudeand alter everything you think you know,each bare-bones tree a slumbering imperiumof fleeting sunlight on fleeting snow. [End Page 118]
AirTrain Newark, Mid-December, 4:15
For an instant, I get a too-brief peekat an enormous psychedelic hot-pink suncrowding out a fleet of ugly, sleeksteel-and-concrete slabs on the horizonthrough the windows on my left. On my rightthe glass rectangle of an airport hotelis an outsized IMAX, all neon coralwith the last of the sun’s reflected light.Whom do I thank? My Delta pilot,for landing my plane forty minutes earlyin this dizzy cross fire of light on light?Or this trigger-happy show-off on artillery,fending off the Newark Airport twilightwith fusillades of dazzle left and right? [End Page 119]
jacqueline osherow’s seventh and most recent collection is Ultimatum from Paradise. She has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment of the Arts, and the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and has won the Witter Bynner Prize for Poetry. She is a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Utah.
