A Long Christmas

A great pleasure of living in a largely Episcopal community is the long celebration of Christmas, many folks waiting to remove decorations until after Twelfth Night, the traditional time of the wise men's visit to the infant Jesus. I grow older each year but feel younger living here, thanks to the decorated trees and outdoor lights some neighbors leave up just as my mother did. These small gifts make winter's deepest darkness easier to accept.

Personal note: While I don't have a Christmas tree, I leave up my light string all year long.

Weather Readings

I
The cats are no fools. They bedded themselves in their plush doughtnuts as soon as they rose from my own bed. All day, they have slept, barely repositioning or peeking.

They know weather.

No sunny spot to stretch across, no open door to deck, no birds to draw them -- jaws chattering -- to the windows.

This cold gray day after several sunny warmer ones hibernates them again.

Not to worry I assure them. These are the death throes of winter.

II
as people winter,
skin thins
when bruised or punctured
failing to hold within
the vitals
and skin dries
leaking out
what was once within
hiding less
revealing more
veins thin rills of blue

IV
The daffodil, in its last throes like winter, shows its linear skeleton.

 

III
Some people read weather, not for the sake of prediction but for the sake of creation. Artist Natalie Miebach collects data and weaves fantastical storms, sometimes composes in musical form.

IV
This is my kind weather, especially on a day like today.

Finding Peace in Wintry Mix

Snow in the morning.

Rain by noon.

Cold by night.

This is winter.

All good cats (and people who don't have to go elsewhere) know the remedy: stay put.

It's the little things

that save a day otherwise tainted by gray skies, a cat's problem ear and unplanned visit to the vet, ice pellets, a nagging headache.

Like five early daffodils, for example, blooming in woods where six deer nipped at other plants.

When the deer moved on, I moved out.

Now, the daffodils light my kitchen.

Where Shadows Rest

Naomi Shihab Nye encourages Ernest Mann to see poems in "shadows / drifting across our ceilings the moment / before we wake up."

Today, poems rest in shadows just beyond computer glare.

But oh how I long to wake from winter fog into light more brilliant out than in.

Winter Longing

Even an indoor cat misses the sun.

It could be worse, I try to tell her.

We could be living in Ittoqqortmoormiit, Greenland,
where the sun does not rise for 58 days.

In with a Whimper, Out with a Bang

Always there, even when I can't see it, the sun is dependable. Today, it sneaked up, hidden behind a thick wet scrim and stayed hidden, till afternoon when it burst forth, burnished and burnishing winter grasses, setting the mountain ablaze.

Over-wintering

All of us are over winter, though winter appears not to be over with us.

I wonder, If the Abbo's Alley water-striders were capable of complaint, might they raise their legs to the sky in desperation before returning to leaf litter to hibernate?

As for me, tub and hot tea, blankets and cats must do.

Two Views of Winter Sun

I
Through icicle blades turning gutters and eaves into hilts.

II
On Adirondack chairs begging for sitters.

Packing Up All My Possibles

Beyond the Red River

by Thomas McGrath

The birds have flown their summer skies to the south,

And the flower-money is drying in the banks of bent grass

Which the bumble bee has abandoned. We wait for a winter lion,

Body of ice-crystals and sombrero of dead leaves.

A month ago, from the salt engines of the sea,

A machinery of early storms rolled toward the holiday houses

Where summer still dozed in the pool-side chairs, sipping

An aging whiskey of distances and departures.

Now the long freight of autumn goes smoking out of the land.

My possibles are all packed up, but still I do not leave.

I am happy enough here, where Dakota drifts wild in the universe,

Where the prairie is starting to shake in the surf of the winter dark.

Coming Soon

to an imaginary bookstore near you! Two new whodunnits featuring Madama Penumbra, the shape-shifting detective! Join her in solving household mysteries! Christmas cards and cutlery figure prominently in the first two books of the series penned by Pun Anon. Reserve your copy now! Available online at http://rainingboredom.com.

Madama Penumbra's Casebook 1: Caterwaul on a Late-night Fence Rail

Madama Penumbra's Casebook 2: Humpty's Great Fall

Winter

is as much a state of mind as an alignment of the planet and sun.

Nesting: complicated bourbon, a hot tub, soup, a good book.

Rain outside. 

Inside beckons.

Sewanee Winter

requires patience.

Rain, fog, ice,
gunmetal sky.
Seesaw temperatures:
70 yesterday,
32 last night.
And the silence --
excepting birdsong,
patter and splatter
of precipitation,
a cat's mewling
and words heard
in the head.

I resist.

I am not yet
of winter mind.

Soft Time

A time 
when earth 
and sky
wear muted 
hues like
loose tweed 
or cashmere, 
so soft 
even rock 
invites slumber, 
vistas flatten:
all becomes
foreground.

Winter Wears White

Abbo's Alley the day after a small snow wears its winter whites.

Winter Meditation

Sky and tree and water, leaf and silt and pebble: Abbo's Alley calms the winter blues.

Brrrr

A friend in Maine sent a photograph this morning:In answer, I took this one:While we shiver some 1,200 miles from each other, we both embrace winter, its furies and beauties. The deer crossing my yard several times a day struggle to find the food they need; the raccoon on a friend's deck last evening scrounged in her bird feeder for a little something; the people I know are bundling up, staying inside, drinking hot tea and coffee while they work or read or clean or compute. Everyone is talking about the temperature. Me, too.

I like the seasons, even this one, that turns year to year, on a sharp edge, an acidic cleansing that pierces and promises spring.