Poems of Winter

Maria Gillan reading at the Carriage House Poetry Series in 2016

In a previous post, we presented an early poem by Maria Gillan, "Winter Light." It is the title poem from her 1985 collection.  Today's poem serves as an interesting contrast. "Grief" is included in Maria's 2016 collection, What Blooms in Winter

Grief

I have been grieving for a long time now.
So many of those I loved gone.
I remain behind in a house
that's suddenly too big for me.
I hide out in the back room,
sit in my brown recliner,
the kind I've always hated
because it smacks of illness and old age.

Now, I joke I am having an affair with my chair
with its pillowy, velvet arms, the way
it welcomes me home, the way I fall asleep in it
as though I were a child and it were a cradle.

I have been grieving for a long time now,
wish I could call you all back
and, sometimes, I imagine you are with me,
in my dreams you seem so alive,
you come to comfort me,
though when I wake up, you have vanished.

But I am learning gratitude for another April,
the world in its radiance dancing into spring,
and I am here to greet it,
my arms open, my feet
doing their own quiet dance.

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's newest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Other recent publications are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow, and the poetry collections What Blooms in Winter and The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets, a pairing of her poems with her paintings. Maria's artist website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.