Welcome to Poetically Yours. Poetically Yours showcases poems by northern Illinois poets. This week features Judy Cummings.
Cummings lives in Loves Park, Illinois. She’s taught high school English and creative writing and developed a family literacy program for a refugee resettlement center. She also worked as an editor, all while raising a family. After moving to Rockford, she continued to teach English as a second language at Rock Valley College and worked as a reading specialist at Spectrum Progressive School. Her abiding love for the natural world is her inspiration for reading, writing, and teaching poetry. She deeply treasures the northern Illinois prairie ecosystem and hopes that mankind will take the necessary steps to ensure the survival of all remaining species.
Cummings wrote this poem to address the darkness around us in nature during the wintertime as well as the dark places inside of us, especially during the pandemic.
Winter 2022
To the world in winter
death seems everywhere.
Brown cornstalks rattle
like skeletons in a deserted field.
Swirling snows
conjure ghastly images
twin specters:
fear and despair.
Yet beyond sight,
buried beneath icy soil,
Spring flowers lie sleeping;
Hope pauses.
Soon snows will thaw
Boots will sink down into the black clay,
daffodils will shake off their slumbers,
mirroring the sun's light,
trumpeting in a better day.
Until the time
when humanity
tilts toward the light
and love streams forth
from hearts now frozen
we must remain rooted,
bravely delving
the deep, dank, darkness
of our very own souls.
- Yvonne Boose is a current corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project. It's a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms like WNIJ. You can learn more about Report for America at wnij.org.
