PERHAPS A GARDEN MoSt poetry Challenge 12

Vincent van Gogh, Winter (Vicarage Garden under Snow), ca. January 1885, Nuenen

PERHAPS A GARDEN

Vincent leaned into the sound and the sweat 

of shoveling snow, mid-winter 

and despair took on the song of ice.

The sun hung like an ornament in the sky 

but offered little warmth, no surety of its return. 

His breath froze, small crystals formed 

and merrily rang to the ground like a fairy orchestra.

But he couldn’t see that, his mind was always raging 

against the darkness that followed him.

Despite everything, it seemed he was always fighting 

with god or the devil, he would come to find 

there was little to distinguish between the two, 

always and eternally at odds with themselves.

Is he merely shoveling snow, or digging a grave? 

The bare trees and bauchy snow sounded their distress to the sky, 

even the distant town perched on the meniscus of winter 

offered little solace from the grim landscape.

Perhaps a garden dwells beneath that snow 

but the promise of spring is capricious as faith.

1/18/20

Prompt #12 (for December 26th): I’ve been carrying the words and melody of the carol “In the Bleak Midwinter,” (based on Christina Rosetti’s poem, and usually set to a in my skull for a f now, and still find myself gripped by by these lines:

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Here are a couple of versions to listen to/watch (after the annoying YouTube commercials):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0aL9rKJPr4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwStDK2_qpw

Whether there’s winter snow where you live, consider this painting by Vincent Van Gogh entitled Winter (The Vicarage Garden Under Snow) as you prepare to write today’s poem:
http://www.nortonsimonfoundation.org/collections/browse_title.php?id=F.1969.39.2.P

Is he shoveling snow, or digging a grave? From bare trees to dirty snow, to wintry, scumbled sky, the landscape is willfully, unremittingly bleak, a painted equivalent to Émile Zola’s grim Naturalist novels of the same period.

Once you go to the Norton Simon site, you’ll probably want to enlarge, zoom, and/or pan the painting to notice the details. To the right of the picture are some bits of biographical information and some questions worth considering—to which I’ll add some other possibilities:
What is it like to work outside in cold weather? What things are under the snow? What secrets are revealed—intentionally or accidentally—when we uncover what’s been hidden?
Use any of the above stuff (the painting, the carol, seasonal sensations)—or anything that occurred to you while reading this—to write a poem set in winter, bleak or joyful, arduous or easeful.