In this week’s poem, Mike Bove reflects on the things we sometimes talk about when we talk about winter – cold, darkness, precarity, even death. I love how this poem recognizes and holds our winter fears, then gently reminds us of the season’s beauties – and the fact that it inevitably leads to spring.

Bove is the author of four books, most recently “Eye” (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023). His work has appeared in journals in the U.S., U.K. and Canada. He was winner of the 2021 Maine Postmark Poetry Contest and a 2023 finalist for a Maine Literary Award in poetry. He is professor of English at Southern Maine Community College and lives with his family in Portland, where he was born and raised.

Poets, please note that submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. Deep Water is especially eager to share poems by Black writers, writers of color, Indigenous writers, LGBTQ+ writers, and other underrepresented voices. You’ll find a link to submit in the credits below.

In December We Talk

about how different the light is
during winter months, slanted
and freshly sharp. You often
tell me your marriage is in peril.
It never is. I often say my kids
are in trouble. They always
pull through. Things feel
precarious in raw times.
Look at these islands, this ocean
we pass on chilly afternoons.
It’s easy to imagine we won’t
survive these cold coastal
months, but it’s just not true.
There a gull is rising. And there
the sand where no ice forms.
There a frozen beach rose we’ve passed
a hundred times. In four months
it will drip color and we’ll believe
nothing ever dies.

— Mike Bove

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. ”In December We Talk,” copyright © 2024 by Mike Bove, was originally published in Black Fox Literary Magazine. It appears by permission of the author. Submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.