On Its Own Terms: Alice Galvin

It's December, and I rely on poet Hal Borland to remind me there's more than one way to experience this month. He offers us a more colorful way to look at December in his poem "On Its Own Terms."

    ‘It wasn't an outdoor poet who coined
the phrase "bleak December." It was some-
one who probably slept late, had sluggish
circulation and was afraid of catching
cold. December was bleak because it wasn't
June, loud with bees and bright with
blossoms.

    True, December can be raw and cold and
its days sometimes are dark, but it is
neither bleak nor colorless. Go outdoors
soon after sunup, which now comes late,
and even on a lowering day you probably
will find a frosty scene of dazzling
beauty. If the day is clear it can be a
world transformed by frost or snow, newly
created, fragile as spun glass, ephemeral
as the passing hour.
...
    Taken on its own terms, no December day
is really bleak. December wasn't meant to
be June.'