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.
