Winter Lights: The 2022 Winter Olympics Chapbook
The written and visual artworks compiled in this booklet were entered in the 2022 Winter Olympics Literature and Visual Arts competitions. The theme for the Olympics is also the theme for the entries: "Winter Lights."
Literature
February Solstice
Every night, lately, I look for Christmas lights.
I took mine down from the shrubs weeks ago,
So now on my evening walks I seek out neighbors
Who were less bound by propriety.
I walk further and further to find the few still left,
Make mental notes of where to come back,
But the hard broken part of winter is outlasting them one by one.
Often I come to a house that had been a favorite
Still glowing a week ago, two nights ago,
And it is dark.
Tonight I am walking to a tree, a favorite lingerer,
A snowy cedar in someone's front yard strung with white bulbs.
There will be a last time I see it this year. There will be a last time I see it.
There will be a last time I will put up my own lights,
And a last time I take them down, put them carefully into the box,
And set them in their corner in the basement.
Usually I say: no good thing endures.
But tonight I tell myself: no good thing overstays.
I imagine that goodness itself made a bargain
With the indifferent hand that flips every switch,
Saying, "You will extinguish all my children
And they will bear it, because in return
Every night terror must also end.
Every evil will fall into the snow and be lost."
I come to the tree, still lit,
Look at it,
Turn around,
And walk home with my face frozen.
Visual Art
"Mountains by Train," by Gwen