December Dry: On Not Writing

A guest post by Joshua Gray

I didn't write any poetry this December. Maybe it's because I've been on yet another round of antibiotics to purge yet another infection. Maybe because I've had to put my cat to sleep. Or maybe because it's Christmas and anyone who knows me knows I'm a Scrooge. I could say the #novpad challenge sponsored by Robert Lee Brewer (@robertleebrewer) wore me out, but I know that isn't true.

I actually think it's the weather. If you haven't already noticed, it's cold outside. It's colder than usual for December, at least in the DC area.

Rainy weather makes me want to sit on the couch with a cup of Joe and a good book, a cat purring beside me. And now I'm beginning to think the colder it is, the more the muse wants to hibernate.

One December day it snowed. Not much mind you, but quantity doesn't really matter to me. When it snows I don't dream of a white Christmas. I don't go searching for my sled or pop "A Christmas Story" in the DVD player. When it snows I want to watch "The Shining" as a matinee and read Robert Frost's "Desert Places" whenever I can. Both the poem and the movie have a bold share of loneliness in them. When it snows I think of Narnia and how lonely Tumnus the fawn was.

But even after thoughts of Narnia disappear and "The Shining" has ended, if I've already re-read Desert Places I will re-read it yet one more time, or maybe twice or thrice more.

The loneliness in this poem, the loneliness in the stars, in lairs, in the woods, within the poet, the loneliness of the night, is how I feel when it's so cold outside that I refuse to call the cats in; the cold makes us isolated. This must be the reason why I can get so December dry.