Despite all efforts from the Bryan County community (trust me, I love y’all!) to dissuade me from republishing poetry in my column, I have decided to once again share some choice verses in my op-ed space this week.

But don’t worry, readers: I do solemnly swear that I’ll once again begin to write some actual columns after the Thanksgiving holiday. Perhaps I’ll get some inspiration after eating too much ham and drinking one too many glasses of Malbec, followed by a good nap.

Clutch, Trish Hopkinson 

I’m a penguin, birthing outside myself, racing down a glacier. My flippers behind the wheel of a fastback Mustang in a rainstorm. Sometimes I find comfort in the weather, shaped like a gourd and web-toed. I unname him, my father who cursed us all. Instead, I name mud pies.

I mix the grit with melting snow and bake them in the sun, the rich organic churn and worms rotting as they warm. I don’t regret the unsaid or the disgrace I release. I wake unafraid the morning after each of my children is born.

Penguins aren’t starfish; limbs gone never return.

My nest becomes unclutched. What I accomplished is tremendous.

Song for autumn. Mary Oliver

 In the deep fall don’t you imagine the leaves think how comfortable it will be to touch the earth instead of the nothingness of air and the endless freshets of wind? And don’t you think the trees themselves, especially those with mossy, warm caves, begin to think of the birds that will come – six, a dozen – to sleep inside their bodies? And don’t you hear the goldenrod whispering goodbye, the everlasting being crowned with the first tuffets of snow? The pond vanishes, and the white field over which the fox runs so quickly brings out its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its bellows. And at evening especially, the piled firewood shifts a little, longing to be on its way.

Andrea Gutierrez is the managing editor of the Bryan County News.