Notes from Exile: Early Winter
Log/Verse: daily reflections from prison, written every morning at my bunk. Part poem, part log book.
This time of year has always carried a certain weight for me. During my time in prison, that shift was even sharper. The world outside my bunk window seemed to lose something each day, but it also revealed things I had never noticed before. With the leaves gone, the trees felt stripped down to their truth. This short piece came out of that season.
EARLY WINTER
Sometimes the trees
are more beautiful
without their
leaves,
barren but more pure
somehow,
their true essence
in the revealed
skeleton,
like the spiny vines
of grapes.
Just outside the window
of my bunk,
there is one big
old dying
oak,
its tangled mangled
branches,
almost speaking to me
in charaded
code.
And at the very
top,
the last remaining
buds,
like one last measure
or plea to stay
alive.
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