2013 Bill Holm Poetry Contest Co-Winner, Martin Willitts Jr.
Martin Willitts Jr is one of the co-winners of the Winter in Variations: Bill Holm Poetry Contest with his collection “Lake Effect; How To Know It is Cold Enough For Winter; Snow Fall; Kambara.”
Martin Willitts Jr is a Quaker, organic gardener, and retired Librarian living in Syracuse, New York. He was nominated for 6 Pushcart and 6 Best of the Net awards. He provided his hands-on workshop “How to Make Origami Haiku Jumping Frogs” at the 2012 Massachusetts Poetry Festival. He won the William K. Hathaway Award for Poem of the Year 2012. He has 5 full-length and 20 chapbooks including national contest winning “Searching for What Is Not There” (Hiraeth Press, 2013).
Martin Willitts Jr.’s forthcoming poetry books include “Waiting For The Day To Open Its Wings” (UNBOUND Content), “City Of Tents” (Crisis Chronicles Press), “Swimming In the Ladle of Stars” (Kattywompus Press), “A Is For Aorta” (Kind of Hurricane Press), “Martin Willitts Jr, Greatest Hits” (Kattywompus Press), “The Way Things Used To Be” (Writing Knights Press), “Irises, the Lightning Conductor For Van Gogh’s Illness” (Aldrich Press).
Lake Effect
The lake affects snow,
assuring a certain amount
of atmospheric conditions.
And when those conditions are not met,
planes weave chem trails
trying to affect the weather.
But it does not rain or snow –
a not-so-gentle reminder
weather is a form of its own making.
Wind affects the lake,
brushing the skim, transports it,
dumps it like a siege engine.
It completes its appointment,
ready for a return engagement.
Temperature affects wind.
It can drop drastically
several octaves,
a bass line never finding bottom.
Then it sits, hulking,
until it collapses.
It brings lake and wind together
into a thunder of snow
affecting us for days,
stillness stretching
where nothing moves.
How To Know It is Cold enough for winter
It snows penguins.
The house is buried under an avalanche
where there are no mountains.
Eskimos spend their vacation nearby.
No one watches the Salvation Army bucket.
No one comes to convert you,
although the end of times
is clearly written in icicles.
Outside is white as an empty sheet of paper.
A pattern of geese spells haiku.
It snows snowshoes and sleds.
You trade-in your house for an igloo.
Pines demand thermal-insulated blankets.
Eskimos complain about the snow and cold.
The Salvation Army bell freezes mid-clang.
The door is really a snowdrift.
Penguins wear seven snowsuits,
waddling like children unable to move
wearing so many snowsuits.
The avalanche moves the entire week into July.
A polar bear asks for directions
unable to read a compass in a blinding snowstorm.
MapQuest mistakes you address for the North Pole.
Penguins start carrying snow shovels.
Geese freeze in mid-air, and won’t fall out into July.
Pine trees shiver.
Snowballs are really wadded papers of failed poems.
Snow fall
there are two types of snow:
the wide-out
wiping out all traces of anything
like White-Out,
no visibility for miles
hushing everything
in stillness, everything
afraid to breath.
The other kind
is acrobatic, light, tumbling,
restless, the kind
melts on a child’s tongue,
brushed by brooms
afraid to settle down.
The first is the unwanted relative;
the other is the wanderlust,
fidgeting, having places to go.
One turned Paul Bunyan’s ox blue;
the other was Paul Bunyan’s dandruff.
I move between snowflakes,
dodging them,
moving like a zipper,
disappearing in between
lace patterns,
in a swirl, delicate as dollies.
Kambara
Based on the series by Ando Hiroshige, The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido, picture # 16
A mountain village in snow at nightfall
1.
Snow at night
deepens silence
to hear a tear drop.
2.
Three people work in snow,
covered in white
like crane feathers.
3.
Below snow mountain’s knees
it is summer,
a crocus shakes dew.
4.
A man under
half-open umbrella.
Still snow finds him.
5.
What do they find in snow
so interesting
they never hear its absence?
Snow Angels
The skies are imagined forgiveness of flint,
almost untouchable. Car headlights illuminating loss
in snow-blur, restless as breath, light within light.
The rest of the day is canceled early, tires grinding,
losing traction. Someone throws shovels of snow,
and wind throws it back, getting nowhere.
The sky is obliterated. This too will pass.
The sun is not a giant snowball. Angels fall
into drifts, you can see their impressions.
They brushed off snow, continued trudging
in swirl of snowflakes reflecting car lights,
until they blend into the blindness.
Snow and the Magpie
Based on the painting, Magpie, by Monet, 1869
A solitary magpie
knows the purpose of a gate
is to rest before continuing
as light
upon new snow
making the bluest of shadows
changing of light
proving shadow is not black
as the magpie
movement of shadow
is feathers
a shift of wind
a flight of light
the feebleness of atmosphere
an “education to eye’
for Monet
like the magpie
we see snow briefly
once
then it takes off
leaving everything
in a standstill
some may wonder
if the magpie was here
or a part of the snow effect
the gate
at the wattle fence
makes the blue-violet shadow
snowbound chill
forever
what in this world is natural?
Snow and the Magpie
Based on the painting, Magpie, by Monet, 1869
A solitary magpie
knows the purpose of a gate
is to rest before continuing
as light
upon new snow
making the bluest of shadows
changing of light
proving shadow is not black
as the magpie
movement of shadow
is feathers
a shift of wind
a flight of light
the feebleness of atmosphere
an “education to eye’
for Monet
like the magpie
we see snow briefly
once
then it takes off
leaving everything
in a standstill
some may wonder
if the magpie was here
or a part of the snow effect
the gate
at the wattle fence
makes the blue-violet shadow
snowbound chill
forever
what in this world is natural?