LINDA WHITTENBERG
★ ★ ★ ★
POETRY
January Morning
I wake to heavy fog
and a landscape dressed in white—
pine and juniper flocked with frost,
aspen branches sheathed
in glistening ice, crystalline spikes
where dry winter grasses spread,
a wondrous, mysterious world.
As the fog withdraws
and morning light shows through,
I stand at the bay window a long while
studying the sparkling glory
our few acres have become,
all the more compelling because
it cannot last, this beauty,
a mere anomaly in the desert.
I would hold on to this moment
if I could, but I have learned
all things lovely
are on their way to something else.
Ice
Iced-in on this bitterly cold night, ice memories
crystallize like frost on a windshield—
college mornings, temperature ten below,
we’re grateful the old Chevy starts,
the one his dad gave him before he left home.
We scrape windows, then, with care,
creep our way toward Eight O’clocks—
English for me, Physics for him.
He is numbers, I am words. The Quadrangle
is coated with silver-blue ice, beautiful,
but treacherous. Limbs of maple and elm,
like finest cut glass threaten to shatter.
We part ways, clutching books to our chests,
lean into biting wind. There’s a good chance,
no matter the good times to come, underfoot
will always be ice, limbs ready to shatter
Since retiring from Unitarian Universalist ministry in 2000, Linda Whittenberg has begun each day well before daylight writing or editing or reading poetry. She says, it is the time when words seem most free to jump onto the page. A chapbook and three collections of poems have resulted. Poems also have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. After many visits to Ireland, she has developed a close relationship with Irish writers and in 2014 published Somewhere in Ireland, poems about her experiences there. Currently a manuscript is in progress to be published in 2018.
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My parents Rob and Hanneke Vierling were good friends of Robert Wilber and Linda . Unfortunately they both passed away. I have now the poems of Linda. I hope that Linda is still healthy. I personally know Scott Wilber, son of Bob Wilber, we used to write to each other in the past.
I hope to get a reaction. Very very kind regards, the daughter of Hanneke and Rob, Virginia Vierling from The Netherlands