Winter

In the sixth volume of the Hobblebush Granite State Poetry Series, Patricia Fargnoli weaves together themes of solitude, silence and rebirth through vivid images of winter and the outdoors. In the title poem she writes, "The road dead-ends in a dense forest, deep as my life./ No one in the cabin there, no one in the woodshed, cold fast night." Her poems gently navigate the empty spaces in nature—ditches, vacant bird houses, dens—and they explore the restful pace of "the slowed down season/ held fast by darkness." Every new variation on the winter theme shows that season in a new light, and the reader is ultimately uplifted by Fargnoli's vision.