Nothing is more magical than snow falling, especially in late evening as night settles in and the snowlight begins to glow in the sky, covering everything with what seems like a glass bowl. I love the way the world looks outside my doors.
I do not love the cleanup afterward, though. We were lucky that several large limbs missed our car and that the one blocking our driveway was removable by us. We went without power for a couple of days two weeks ago, and while that was fun for a little while, I was glad when the lights came back on. This latest snow on Friday was delicate, falling like sifted flour, and my husband was able to clear the road fairly quickly next morning. The light coming through the lacework of branches Saturday dawn was beautiful.
So, here's to snow, in moderate amounts! And now, how about spring? To hell with the groundhog saying in groundhogese that we've 6 more weeks of winter. Or maybe he didn't say that at all. It's in how you interpret things, after all. Who knows what a groundhog thinks, if if he/she even thinks at all.
Sorry, didn't mean to diss groundhogs! I like the one that lives down the hill from us and hope that he has a long and happy life, away from the wheels of drunk students and other assorted maniacs who take the curve too fast.
Spring will come when it gets good and ready. The wind cutting through my wool scarf this morning made me hope it was getting ready! Here's a poem for the first shoot of green pushing up through the cold sod. I wrote it for Cathy Smith Bowers, our new Poet Laureate, after she visited me in Sylva last month.
(I've long been fascinated by how certain words "feel" in our mouths. Green, in this instance. And verde, how does it differ from our Anglo-Saxon green? It's more of a dance. Our "green" is a keening, a longing, maybe because of the long Nordic winters?? I also wanted to try to express how each poem wakes us up, makes us see again. )
Winter Noon
Sylva, North Carolina
(1/20/2001)
Verde, que te quiero verde....
(Green, how I want you green.. .)
‘ Federico Garcia-Lorca
for Cathy
We’ve seen how stems snap,
the leaves fall,
the rain soaks,
how ice weaves its blanket
around weeds and garden.
Now we raise our glasses
to what we see over the rooftops
of downtown: gray mountains waiting
beneath scales of cloud
like the ones we know fall
from our eyes
when we see
how each poem comes alive
in the midst of our cold times,
a small hook
that yearns through the mute
sod, our throats
tight with keening its
coming forth, the tip
of our tongues
against bedrock.
4 comments:
Hello to Kay this snowy evening.It was twenty degrees when I woke this morning and has not risen above 25 all day. Probably no one else I know has a clue what this winter has done to me. I've had about all I can take. I know it's not bad like Buffalo in 77, and I might sound like a cry baby, but when you say " No more snow, Please!" I say, "No more!". It's still snowing. The few who call say, "Well, all the roads are clear in the valley," as if they think I am lying when I say my road is covered with snow, and it is impassible.
I'm sure it has everything to do with being situated on the northside. The old switchback, you know. When it started snowing Friday and covered the road and woods in one hour, I knew. This is the fifth or sixth snow. I've lost track. How did Alma endure?
Thanks for the beautiful pictures and the poem.
See you in the spring.
The pastel sky through the winter trees is beautiful but what resonates with me today is the thought of green as a keening word.
GREEN!!!! Que te quiero! GREEN!!!!
i am oh so tired of this cold weather!!! and i don't want to hate the groundhog either :) that line about him living a good life really cracked me up!
Nancy, I want this winter over--for your sake, if nothing else. I don't know how women like Alma endured. Women like Emma Bell Miles, who lived on a mountain with 7 children and lost one because the dr. couldn't get to them, who had TB and died of it. I think of the deathwatches mothers went through during the winter months in these mountains.
So, Vicki, I can imagine the keening that must have accompanied their longing for the green of spring. How they wanted it so passionately!
I love the groundhog song, Jessie. Do you know it? Old Groundhog....
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