guilty post

Hey, friends...
So it turns out I am definitely not in the Thoreau school of writing - I went to a little cabin in the woods, and I didn't write a word. After a lot of internal debate I have decided to just pick up where I left off, since writing four extra would be deceitful (the idea was a poem a day, after all). And since I don't want to just stop writing this blog, I will just call it a late Christmas/Chanukah hiatus, beat my breast four extra times on Yom Kippur, and go on with it. I know breaks are for real bloggers and not just one-year projects, but... well... I don't know. I lasted for over 100 straight poem-a-days; I think the goal of "until the end of the academic year" means well over 120 more, around 130, I looked it up once, I'll have to again... but at any rate... I'm going to keep going with it, and not sweat the small stuff too much, and not give up. Words of encouragement/rage, readership?
Here's a muddled just-came-back-from-the-woods poem.

When I go to the quiet, I expect to find
poetry—mannered
well-chosen solitude.
Instead a creak mumbles up snow-laden stumps
and fades. Out of the green needles,
howling, out the river, steam,
laughter in its long tongue.
And the four of us tramping
in full gear after a patch-eyed mutt.

To seek silence
you have to press on and out—
the top of the mountain swept with ice.
Even there something sways and hungers,
hungers and burrows,
burrows and dies, with a last heave of the flank.
When we stepped in
the snow hit our hips—we sank.
We bit hard, drummed it into mounds,
didn’t count what we burned to keep warm.
The red-ruffed hound thrust her snout into our palms.

Somewhere here a birch bares its neck
swept clean. Each branch like a wire
red-papered with light.
Here I am fleeced and stout
watching a quiet thing, its skin damp as linen.
The wind is heavy as a mastiff’s breath--
heavy, quiet. In dull boots, in a wild glade,
in sun-gutted snow the cold will clench,
I too, round, restless,
round, easy, am close to death.