11 January 2026

By Philip Kuepper

Shards of ice brush
one against the other
on the sluggish tide
of the ocean, mornings,
dressed, as it is, for winter,
dressed in its waterproofs of ice.
The temperature hisses
as it drops below twenty.
It does not suffer warmth, gladly.
A couple of gulls float
amidst the shards, impervious
to the frigid. All is
cloaked in grey and white,
white, scintillant,
when the sun glances off it,
causing blinding flashes comet the air,
too bright to look on, directly.
Shore grass shies when winds muss it
like an affectionate uncle mussing his nephew’s hair.
Snow frosts unevenly the caked sand.
The air is brittle, bitter.
I inhale deeply the freshness of it.
Winter detritus snaps
and breaks, brittle,
underfoot. The parking lot at the ocean is
only partly plowed,
A marsh wren clings, singing, dully,
to a clump of spikegrass, drained of green.
He sings as though half asleep.
It is the season to be desultory,
the season to be hibernating
in memory, in memory
of rowing the summer just past.
Is it really only three months since
when last the oars slapped
the water, only three months,
when summer already seems
a time so deeply buried
memory finds itself forgetting
just how it was,
just how it felt
to row in the heat of rowing?

(3 January 2026)