Category: Winter 23-24

It didn’t snow much here this winter. But today I ran across this piece I wrote in 2015 when the snow fell long and deep.

So then I came to the playground.
Well, it’s not a playground exactly.
It’s just a set of swings. Fine, sturdy
wooden ones hung from hooked rods
on a high metal frame, well-built,
and sitting there in the woods
by one of the few shelters,
half way between the parking lot
and the forest-edged ponds.

Just looking at them, you could tell
they wanted to be in motion.
It was all I could do not give them a push.
But something held me back. Maybe
it was the silence. Maybe it was the snow.
So I just stood there, listening, and I swear
I heard joyful shrieks and the laughter
of children, and that whining sound
that swings sing.

Places hold their songs and sing them
long after the singers have disappeared.
And here were these swings, full of motion,
even in their stillness, playing memories
through their long winter wait.

The world this morning was drenched
in fog and a rain gently fell.
Suspended from the spruce
a thousand tiny globes of glistening light
made me feel as if I’d awakened
in some mystical world where joy rose
in a whispering mist and hidden geese
flew like secrets, their wings pearled,
their muffled calls signaling a message
that only hearts could know.

Snow melting on the mossy log
tells the tale:
Spring and winter’s dance
is at its balance point.
Neither holds sway.
Things can tip either way
and will, for days.
Spring’s advance
makes fools of us all.

It is enough just to be,
to be awareness, noticing,
to feel the temperature and flow
of the air, to note the rustling of the leaves
and the colors of the sky, to feel your body
balancing, to hear the sounds, to note
the scents, to be still and in motion
all at once, riding the song.

Oh sky, who drenched us in sunlight
for nearly a week of days, whose stars
glittered at night in your velvet deep,
we thank you. And we watch in thanks
as you pull in soft clouds and release
your sweet moisture on all the dear flowers
asleep now beneath Earth’s soil, dreaming,
as do we, of the coming spring.

I walked the trail around the wetlands
hoping, on this spring-like day, to see
that migrating ducks had come, or perhaps
an early blackbird or two. Even the sound
of a peeper would have been grand.
But the pond held no feathered visitors
and not even the calls of crows etched
the pearly sky. It is, I reminded myself,
still February, and was content to find
not ice, but puddles, dotting my path.
Then, as I followed deer trails through
the woods, a patch of black and white
caught my eye and I turned to see a cat
stretched atop a fallen log as if she owned it.
Here, in the wildness! I stopped and stooped
and spoke to her. She was, she said,
quite fine and not frightened or lost
at all. “People live,” I told her, pointing,
“up there on the hill, about a third
of a mile away, if you need them.”
She nodded, ever so slightly, then
returned to the pleasure of her fine perch
and the gift of sun-warmed air. So
I walked on, golden eyes following me
until I disappeared.

Hear the open waters sing. See the reeds
offering shelter for your nests, and the trees,
whose bare branches reach up like beacons,
advertising prime real estate for building
your homes. Sense the safety of this place,
the welcoming ambiance of the neighborhood.
Come early; stay late. We invite you.

I caught them. I know evidence
when I see it. Plainly, a party
happened here. It looks like a pub
at the morning edge of a night
of fine carousing. Some hangers-on
are still reeling and some just drifting
toward the day’s first light. The rabble-
rousers have gone, leaving pine cones
everywhere, chewed right to their cores.
What a mess! And look at that heap
of cone scales! Never in all my years
have I seen a pile that high! But then
neither have I ever seen a drunken pine.
Right here, in the place I always called
the nursery. Looks like the babes
are growing up.

I promised you, summer world, that when the snow
was deep and I had begun to believe that winter
was eternity, I would remember you. I would remember
your countless shades of green, your plush grass
buzzing with bees and clover, and the smell of it.
I would remember the warmth of your sun
and the blessing of the breeze singing through
your dancing leaves, and the sheer, inviting
welcome of your being.

And now that day has come, the one where I began
to believe that winter would go on forever.
I confess that I didn’t choose to remember;
the memory of you came to me on its own,
drifting across the cold, gently emerging
with a touch of kindness that I could not ignore.

And so I sit here, before my fire, waiting
for the another assault from winter’s cold,
and I lose myself in your rolling verdant hills
until my eyes tear with gratitude
for comfort of you, for remembering
you are as real as the cold, and will return.

“Every now and then,” I think to myself
as I stand at the edge of the pond
in the clear winter air, snow sparkling
on the ice, and near the pond’s center,
skim ice giving way to smooth water,
as I take in the pines, and the way sunlight
dances with shadow through their boughs,
and how the far water mirrors them,
and how the silence almost makes me want to
hold my breath as the thought completes:
“Every now and then,” it says in hushed tones,
“there’s a moment like this
that makes all the rest of them worth it.”