Today’s New Verse News: RECUERDO
by Julian O. Long
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Hanging my heart’s wassail outdoors again once more shall I light tonight’s candle to honor the Maccabees? I, who am neither Jew nor Greek nor gentile enough to call myself Christian any longer, but not alone. Eight days of Temple miracle this year encompass Christmas. A bit like recurring planetary conjunctions billed from time to time in the press as the Star of Bethlehem, star in the east that leads us towards a dying west as Arcturus drives his great plow in such heavenly furrows as may from time to time command him. And we, needing children we once were, await the miracle winter solstice always seems to promise ponder more and more the time to time, as our recurring celebrations grow each year more hollow, as nations rage and find no compass, take no counsel or reproof. What will the new year bring us, no new birth certainly. Left to comfort ourselves, can we find solace in faded retrograde, memory of walks to school in childish crowds when the air blew fresh and scented with as yet no fevered yearning? It cannot be expanded to the whole, and yet one almost thinks it could if one knew the song— and thus we begin to see our breath as loops of cold air lift our singing high and towards the sun, children again once more in the chosen present moment, having no memory or thought of time before or after.
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Julian O. Long is a previous contributor to The New Verse News. His poems and essays have appeared in The Sewanee Review, Pembroke Magazine, New Mexico Magazine, and Horizon among others. Recent publications have appeared or are forthcoming at The Piker Press, Better Than Starbucks, Raw Art Review, CulturMag, PineStraw, and O’Henry.