Dale A. Edmands

Guest Poems

Tunnel Vision

Every evening I enter this tunnel called winter,
The new light at each day's end egging me on.
It is not a long drive to the school,
As if someone, or something has predetermined
The exact amount of time,
and coordinated it
With the last stretch of musk melon sky
That highlights the barren hulks of trees
Surrounding the campus where shadows
Of students move in quick silence against
The night's chill.
This is how the season Will pass-
Each month's weather splattered
On the walls of winter like so much graffiti,
A collage of thaws and cold snaps, snowfall,
And rain, unbearably bright days too frigid For fun,
windy nights with too many stars,
And a glowing monster of a moon,
too close To make use of the new Christmas telescope.
Until suddenly, on a late afternoon in April,
The lingering light at the end of the tunnel Becomes a tunnel itself,
an eternal portal Through which all things must enter,
If this is why the sun returns to us again,
And our hands push forward an hour of time
With the swift and easy motion of a wing,
As if small shapes and sounds depended on it.