January 2020
Martin Willits, Jr.
mwillitts01@yahoo.com
Bio Note:  I have never gotten the habit of VV request for first-person bios. I never know what to say about myself that does not include publications or looking like I am bragging. And I am not comfortable with appearing like someone bragging. I was a professional puppeteer and oral storyteller, an award winning library director, a trainer of trainers, spent time as a field medic in Vietnam for the American Friends Service Committee (Quaker), have over 20 chapbooks and 16 full-lengths including national contest winning poems. As a Quaker, I write from "a message I received" during silent worship. I type eyes-closed, trance-like, a kind of automatic writing. As a former Jazz musician, improvisation is a part of what I do.

The Shortest Day

Snow-laden pines with pale-blue shadows
relentlessly shaking branches.
A hairline fracture appeared on the icy water.

A net of silence was cast over the fields
humbled by snow.
Whatever was here had passed.

Each tree and wind and dashed snowflake
connected, speaking the same words,
the same story of immaculate light.

I found where a mountain fed the headwaters,
a slow, trickling source, almost unseen,
burbling like an old person mumbling.
©2020 Martin Willits, Jr.
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