Words by Winter

Oh, the fathers. The fathers and those who stand in for fathers. My own father is gone now, and how I miss him. 

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry. Today’s poem, Dressing My Father-in-Law for Burial, is by Benjamin Cutler and is included in his new collection Wild Silence, forthcoming in October 2024. It's featured here with kind permission of the poet.  I encourage you to check out more of his beautiful work. 

Sterling A. Brown's work stays with me, making me think about childhood, and the things we leave behind, but why? 

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music composed and performed by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry.  Today's poem, Return, by writer, poet and teacher Sterling A. Brown, is in the public domain. Words by Winter can be reached at [email protected]. 

All summer, he's hidden
his voice, no matter how I begged for
just one song.

Three lines from "Music Box" which, to me, encapsulate the love and anger and longing that siblings can feel for each other, all in the same moment. Families are complicated. 

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry. Today’s poem, Music Box, by Rhett Iseman Trull, is featured here with kind permission of the poet.  I encourage you to check out more of her beautiful work. 

Sometimes a simple poem, filled with a kind of resigned longing, belies the long meanderings of an extraordinary and complicated life. 

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music composed and performed by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry.  Today's poem, So We'll Go NoMore A-Roving, by Louis Untermeyer, is in the public domain. Words by Winter can be reached at [email protected]. 

What are some of the most important things you've left off your resume, the kind of things that in your heart of heart are most important to you? Poet Joyce Sutphen lists some of hers, in this gorgeous poem.

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry. Today’s poem, Things You Didn't Put on Your Resumé, by Joyce Sutphen, is featured here with kind permission of the poet.  I encourage you to check out more of her beautiful work. 

I tend to shy away from rhyme, thinking it'll be all jingly, but guess what? I'm so often wrong.

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music composed and performed by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry.  Today's poem, Faith, by Louis Untermeyer, is in the public domain. Words by Winter can be reached at [email protected]. 

To be loved by someone the way our couches love us? That's a beautiful thing, at least to someone like me, who personifies the furniture in her home.

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry. Today’s poem, Ode to a Couch, by Chris Abbate, is featured here with kind permission of the poet.  I encourage you to check out more of his work at http://www.chrisabbate.com/about-me.html.

"Must I alone, my once, my own?" laments the poet. We've all been there, haven't we?

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music composed and performed by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry.  Today's poem, Gone With the Swallows, is by Arab-American writer and poet Ameen Rihani and is in the public domain. Words by Winter can be reached at [email protected]. 

What if we cared for everyone in pain, everyone suffering, the way we would care for our own child?

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry. Today’s poem, Words Whispered to a Child Under Siege, by Joseph Fasano, is featured here with kind permission of the poet.  I encourage you to check out more of his work at josephfasano.net or on Instagram.

This poem, Challenge, by Sterling A. Brown, has haunted me --not in a bad way, in a wondering sort of way--since I first came across it.

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music composed and performed by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry.  Today's poem, Challenge, by writer, poet and teacher Sterling A. Brown, is in the public domain. Words by Winter can be reached at [email protected].