This year I will sometimes feature more than one poem by a particular poet, and this weekend belongs to Paula Billups. (I posted her poem “Christmas Letter for 2016, A Hard Year” yesterday.)

Today enjoy “A Delicate Milk Floods Winter.”

***

A Delicate Milk Floods Winter

A delicate milk floods winter
overwhelming my intentions with
early fog,
making faint the resolution to
meaning, to spin yet another
tale – for no one, for nothing.

I used to be so deft at that.

Now if such impulse rises
I stare it down blankly
as if addressing
a sudden stray cat staring
greenly back serenely
shrugging off the gathering chill
taking a long-known meeting
(or else a common standoff
to reward
the maker of the first sound.)

Neither of us can think of
a thing worth saying
that words could hold.

The mercury dives. And that idea,
hazy, deep, abandoned and
unbiddable, ignores my invitation,
winks slowly to show me who’s boss
and fluidly turns – an eddy in the year
fades back to the giving darkness
that lifted it –
a lace pattern once so crisp and
diamond-clear distilled to
icecream thoughts
all melted.

***

Paula Billups is a visual artist whose work takes in the media of painting, drawing, collage, artist’s books, installation, and collaboration. She bases her studio practice in Boston and Berlin and exhibits internationally, most recently in Cuba, Toronto, Berlin, and Luxembourg. Core themes of her work include interior shamanic processes, hidden and lost knowledge, and contradiction of the human desire for omniscience. Poetry has been a running thread of her creative life since the age of ten. She writes a blog at paulabillupsart.blogspot.com and files her poetry at paulabillups.tumblr.com. You can learn more about her work at www.paulabillups.com.