winter thin
the buck’s antlers are shedding
and it’s a painfully beautiful sight
because you think it would be a thing that hurts
but it’s nothing like that at all…
if only we could all lose our defining feature
once a year, and stand proud in the bitter cold
with the entirety of our defenses falling off,
crumbling, departing from us in bloody shreds…
that’s what it’s like to stand in front of you,
naked and frozen, and winter thin,
awaiting the return of life in spring…
the beast cannot always claim to know what he is doing,
or explain exactly where all this is coming from
some of these parts are sleep songs, rem-riled visions —
you toss and turn and roll around
until one limb goes completely numb
even when you run so fast,
there’s barely any recompense —
appreciation here is a fickle wind…
I once heard that nature’s inconsistency
could be careful planning in disguise…
if you were one of my fictional characters,
no one would ever want to hear about you
and that would be better…
because sometimes I feel sick
with all the absurdity thrust upon me…
making light of things that are actually sad
this isn’t comedy, this is basic mammalian tragedy
it’s suffering, and I’d rather it be a story
or a poem because then no one
would ever ask me about it
and it wouldn’t feel so rotten on my tongue
instead it’ll be washed clean off my hands —
it’ll glide slick off my finger tips into oblivion
Garbage Notes:
Let’s see, what do I want to say about this one. The initial image of the buck shedding its antlers was something that really stuck in my head from a scene in the show Yellowjackets. The sight of it was immediately moving for some reason. Something about the bloody shreds falling off the animal’s defining feature really got to me.
It got me thinking about how such painful beauty exists in everyday life. Like the speaker who can no longer speak or the writer who struggles to find the words. Like the builder whose body is breaking down with fatigue. Or the athlete who has become injured.
If there’s some critical part of you that you can’t use for some reason, it’s not just a challenge, it’s an assault on your identity.
We all have these things that make us who we are, and at various times of year or in certain seasons it may be harder for us to express these defining characteristics. In winter, for example, people can have a really hard time with how cold it is or how little daylight there is. It fucks up your body and your state of mind. This kind of stress can make us feel lost and defenseless.
So, in a world that doesn’t allow us to hibernate, how do we keep going? This is the question I was wrestling with here. We cannot always claim to know what we are doing. We cannot always go on so easily when some essential aspect of us is lacking.
One thing I suppose we can do is rest. We can wait and be patient with ourselves. We can pause and enjoy the presence of others. We can take time to reflect inwardly and dream our way back into things. We can sleep it off. We can try something else that doesn’t require the cognitive or physical assets we take for granted.
At the end of the poem I feel there’s a particular vulnerability that’s expressed—there’s such a naked admission of hardship in the lines: “This isn’t comedy, this is basic mammalian tragedy, it is suffering.” And then there’s the revelation that it’s so much easier and often preferable to express these sentiments in art than in day-to-day reality.
Do you understand what I mean by winter thin? Does this dead season enervate you in a way that makes it hard to be yourself? Or makes it challenging to be on all the time? I know it does for me, and that’s what I hoped to express in this poem.
Franco Amati 2024
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it might be my favorite poem of yours, Franco
Yes, Franco, some of getting through winter is about "rest. ... wait and be patient with ourselves...reflect inwardly and dream our way back into things"... thus the classic association with hibernation. My view, and that of some people i know, is that everything is essentially alive, even the desk am working at because it still has some of the energy of the oak tree in it and because the desk is actively being a desk and not falling apart; so while there is much stillness and lack of growing plants and such like, i don't consider it a "dead season"... and i make the effort to compensate for the lack of aliveness of other seasons by paying more attention to the skies, studying the bare branches, looking for the birds, respecting what the cold air is doing, while also working to keep warm.