In this week’s poem, Kevin Sweeney brings us into early December, in all its stark beauty and, sometimes, its challenges to the spirit. I love this poem’s lyrical sense of place and sound, and its lyrical attention to the season’s scarce and precious light.

Sweeney’s latest book is “Imminent Tribulations” from Moon Pie Press. He has taught at Southern Maine Community College since 1983 and is an assistant poetry editor at The Café Review, for which he has done interviews with poets Carl Dennis, Kim Addonizio, Martín Espada, Gerald Locklin, William Carpenter and Margaret Randall.

Poets, please note that submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. Deep Water is especially eager to share poems by Black writers, writers of color, Indigenous writers, LGBTQ+ writers and other underrepresented voices. You’ll find a link to submit in the credits below.

Vigils
By Kevin Sweeney

Thin red sunlight
dying on the top floors
of the Eastland Hotel
3:45 Saturday, first
week of December,
Mellen Street bells
ringing at Sacred Heart
4 p.m. Mass where the
reading, Isaiah, tells
of a voice crying out
in the wilderness.
Here winter
days surrender
their afternoons
like loss of will.
It gets so hard
to find locusts
& and wild honey
to see us through.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Vigils,” copyright 2016 by Kevin Sweeney, was originally published in Imminent Tribulations (Moon Pie Press). It appears by permission of the author. Submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.