Welcome back to The Daily Poem. I'm David Kern, and today's Thursday, December 30th, 2021.

This will be my last episode of the year. Heidi will do one poem for December 31st, and we

will be back in the new year. But I want to say thank you to everyone who has been listening to

this podcast or any of the podcast we produce here at Goldberry Studios. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen and making us a part of your day.

One of our resolutions is to be more consistent with the daily poem

as we've gotten things more established here at Goldberry Studios and Goldberry Books.

That's our goal.

Thanks to Heidi for pitching in here as well a couple days a week.

Today's poem is by Richard Wilbur.

He was an American poet and translator who lived from March of 1921 until October of 2017.

He was one of the most important poets of the 20th century, especially here in America, and was

appointed the second poet laureate consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress in

1987 to receive the Pulitzer Prize twice for poetry once in 1957 and again in 1989.

You have heard from him on this podcast a time or two.

If you're a long time listener, you know that he is one of my favorites.

And the poem that I'm going to read today is called Years End.

Goes like this.

Now winter downs the dying of the year, and night is all a settlement of snow.

From the soft street, the rooms of houses show a gathered light, a shape and atmosphere like frozen over lakes

whose ice is thin and still allows some stirring down within. I've known the wind by water

banks to shake the late leaves down, which frozen where they fell and held in ice as dancers

in a spell fluttered all winter long into a lake.

...