Category: Snow

Insculped and Embossed

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What heart could have thought you?—
Past our devisal
(O filigree petal!)
Fashioned so purely,
Fragilely, surely,
From what Paradisal
Imagineless metal,
Too costly for cost?
Who hammered you, wrought you,
From argentine vapour?—

“God was my shaper.
Passing surmisal,
He hammered, He wrought me,
From curled silver vapour,
To lust of His mind;—
Thou could’st not have thought me!
So purely, so palely,
Tinily, surely,
Mightily, frailly,
Insculped and embossed,
With His hammer of wind,
And His graver of frost.“
~Francis Thompson “To a Snowflake”

photo by Alexay Kljatov, pbs.org
photo by Alexay Kljatov, pbs.org

I wish one
could press snowflakes
in a book
like flowers.
~James Schuyler from “February 13, 1975” in Collected Poems

Each snowflake falls alone, settling in together to create sculptures in communal effort. And each is created as a singular masterpiece itself.

We too, as the created, are like each snowflake. Together we change the world, sometimes for better, too often for worse. But each of us have come from heaven uniquely designed and purposed, preciously shaped, hammered, wrought and preserved for eternity through God’s loving sacrifice.

Without God embossed on our surface, we would melt into oblivion between the pages of history.

A Generous Window

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It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?
~Pat Schneider “The Patience of Ordinary Things”

…leave me a little love,
A voice to speak to me in the day end,
A hand to touch me in the dark room
Breaking the long loneliness.
In the dusk of day-shapes
Blurring the sunset,
One little wandering, western star
Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.
Let me go to the window,
Watch there the day-shapes of dusk
And wait and know the coming
Of a little love.
~Carl Sandburg from “At a Window”

Everything looks a little different when framed by a window, especially in the winter when protected from the weather. I am set apart, looking out, rather than immersed within the icy snowy landscape myself.

With that separation, I feel as though I could be looking at the past, the present or the future.

It is not unlike being in an art museum, walking past masterpieces that offer a framed view into another time and place, populated with people I don’t know and will never meet.

So I go to the windows, moving through the house and peering out at the life that awaits beyond the frame. But rather than simply admire the view, protected as I am from the chill wind, I find the courage to walk out the door into whatever awaits beyond the glass.

A Faint Whispering

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Low clouds hang on the mountain.
The forest is filled with fog.
A short distance away the
Giant trees recede and grow
Dim. Two hundred paces and
They are invisible. All
Day the fog curdles and drifts.
The cries of the birds are loud.
They sound frightened and cold. Hour
By hour it grows colder.
Just before sunset the clouds
Drop down the mountainside. Long
Shreds and tatters of fog flow
Swiftly away between the
Trees. Now the valley below
Is filled with clouds like clotted
Cream and over them the sun
Sets, yellow in a sky full
Of purple feathers. After dark
A wind rises and breaks branches
From the trees and howls in the
Treetops and then suddenly
Is still. Late at night I wake
And look out of the tent. The
Clouds are rushing across the
Sky and through them is tumbling
The thin waning moon. Later
All is quiet except for
A faint whispering. I look
Out. Great flakes of wet snow are
Falling. Snowflakes are falling
Into the dark flames of the
Dying fire. In the morning the
Pine boughs are sagging with snow,
And the dogwood blossoms are
Frozen, and the tender young
Purple and citron oak leaves.
~Kenneth Rexroth “Snow” from The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth

Snow and then freezing rain fell for hours yesterday
so we remain cloaked and iced and drifted this morning

~we appear more pristine than we are_

Underneath this chilly blanket
we’re barely presentable,
sleep-deprived,
wrinkled and worn,
all mud and mildew beneath.

~yet a thaw is coming~

Spring will rise from its snowy bed,
lit from an inner fire
that never burns out.

Through clouds like ashes from a burning bush,
we turn aside to see God’s glory;
our eyes carefully covered
from the bright glaze of snow and ice.

We feel His flash of life as He passes by.

This Muffle and Hush

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If day after day I was caught inside
this muffle and hush

I would notice how birches
move with a lovely hum of spirits,

how falling snow is a privacy
warm as the space for sleeping,

how radiant snow is a dream
like leaving behind the body

and rising into that luminous place
where sometimes you meet

the people you’ve lost. How
silver branches scrawl their names

in tangled script against the white.
How the curves and cheekbones

of all my loved ones appear
in the polished marble of drifts.
~Kirsten Dierking “Shoveling Snow” from Northern Oracle.

These sub-zero January nights linger long,
beginning early and lasting late.
I find myself stuck in an insistent winter,
pushing through the snowdrifts.

A wintry soul
can be a cold and empty place.

I appeal to my Creator
who knows my struggle.
He asks me to keep my promises
because He keeps His promises.
His buds of hope and light and warmth
still grace my bare branches.

He brings me out of the dark,
into the freshness of a snowy dawn,
to finish what He brought me here to do.

Snow Day

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Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,   
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,   
and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost   
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.

In a while, I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,   
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,   
and I will shake a laden branch
sending a cold shower down on us both.

But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,   
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.   
I will make a pot of tea
and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,   
as glad as anyone to hear the news

that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,   
the Ding-Dong School, closed.
the All Aboard Children’s School, closed,   
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along with—some will be delighted to hear—

the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School   
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and—clap your hands—the Peanuts Play School.

So this is where the children hide all day,
These are the nests where they letter and draw,   
where they put on their bright miniature jackets,   
all darting and climbing and sliding,
all but the few girls whispering by the fence.

And now I am listening hard
in the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,   
what riot is afoot,
which small queen is about to be brought down.
~Billy Collins “Snow Day”

Two posts in one day! This winter storm deserves documentation…

Thanks to a snow day here in the Pacific Northwest, everyone is grounded and homebound except the hungry birds who have completely cleaned out my seed and suet supply. They stare at me accusingly through the window so I have tossed them a loaf of sourdough bread to pick away at.

Some would say that retirement seems like a snow day everyday and they aren’t too far wrong. The difference is that usually I’m not slogging through drifting snow to get to my barn chores so my work is a little more onerous on days like this. I don’t mind too much if it is only a day or two.

So we’re hunkered down for the duration. Here’s hoping you are safe and warm and enjoying the view wherever you may be on this wintry day.

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
~Robert Frost “Dust of Snow”

Truth is Found in Silence

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If you have seen the snow
under the lamppost
piled up like a white beaver hat on the picnic table
or somewhere slowly falling
into the brook
to be swallowed by water,
then you have seen beauty
and know it for its transience.
And if you have gone out in the snow
for only the pleasure
of walking barely protected
from the galaxies,
the flakes settling on your parka
like the dust from just-born stars,
the cold waking you
as if from long sleeping,
then you can understand
how, more often than not,
truth is found in silence,
how the natural world comes to you
if you go out to meet it,
its icy ditches filled with dead weeds,
its vacant birdhouses, and dens
full of the sleeping.
But this is the slowed down season
held fast by darkness
and if no one comes to keep you company
then keep watch over your own solitude.
In that stillness, you will learn
with your whole body
the significance of cold
and the night,
which is otherwise always eluding you.
~Patricia Fargnoli “Winter Grace” from Hallowed

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
~Emily Dickinson (1263)

If the truth is revealed all at once, I tend to hide from it.

Sometimes I need to see it emerge slowly and silently, a gentle dawning as if a rising sun is transforming night to day. If truth is an illuminating back drop reflecting onto my life, I am less likely to be blinded by its brilliance.

Instead it transforms me, dazzled and dazed.

I once was lost, but now am found.  Was blind but now I see.

Chill Air Coming

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Today there are definite signs:

gray sky and clouds
their core dark as sorrow

torrent rain driven aslant
against the barn’s side

swollen Yamhill Creek
furious with water

another V of geese
over the farm this morning

the plowed field soggy underfoot
fixed on distant May

a hawk hung in chill October air
like a narrow-winged thought.
~Ed Higgins, “Anticipating Winter” from Near Truth Only

Field with Plowing Farmers by Vincent Van Gogh

Bleak winter weather is predicted to arrive nearly everywhere this week, with subzero temperatures, wind chills and blizzards.

I’m really not mentally ready for this coming cold, but an Arctic outflow waits for no one and certainly not for me.

The gulls, geese and swans somehow endure the chill, gleaning our neighbors’ muddy corn stalk fields, while overhead, eagles and hawks float on the wind currents, scanning for prey.

As I warm up in the house after barn chores, I turn the calendar pages, looking ahead to March. I know better than to try to rush time when each freezing day is precious and fleeting. I still try.

Like the birds sticking it out through winter here, the snowdrops are sprouting from under the leaf cover, as they do each January. They, like me, trust that spring is only around the corner.

So we endure what we must now with the knowledge of what comes next.

The Sunrise Shall Visit Us: Endless and Suspended

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…we are faced with the shocking reality:
Jesus stands at the door and knocks, in complete reality.
He asks you for help in the form of a beggar,
in the form of a ruined human being in torn clothing.

He confronts you in every person that you meet.

Christ walks on the earth as your neighbor as long as there are people. He walks on the earth as the one through whom
God calls you, speaks to you and makes his demands.

That is the greatest seriousness and the greatest blessedness of the Advent message. Christ stands at the door. Will you keep the door locked or open it to him?
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from his Advent Sermon “The Coming of Jesus into our Midst” from God is in the Manger

Upon the darkish, thin, half-broken ice
There seemed to lie a barrel-sized, heart-shaped snowball,
Frozen hard, its white
identical with the untrodden white
of the lake shore. Closer, its somber face—
Mask and beak—came clear, the neck’s
Long cylinder, and the splayed feet, balanced,
Weary, immobile. Black water traced, behind it,
An abandoned gesture. Soft in still air, snowflakes
Fell and fell. Silence
Deepened, deepened. The short day
Suspended itself, endless.
~Denise Levertov “Swan in Falling Snow”

When we witness suffering,
when the stranger in ragged clothes
approaches and asks for help,
how do we respond?

I too easily forget: I am also the least of these,
desperate for rescue,
suspended, immobile, in a darkening quiet,
waiting, waiting.

He patiently stands at the closed door.
His tender mercy lifts our deepening state,
waits for us to open up, gives us wings to the eternal,
endlessly forgiven, endlessly loved, endlessly endless.

Advent 2023 theme
…because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high 
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song

The Sunrise Shall Visit Us: We Don’t Journey Alone

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God came to us because he wanted to join us on the road, to listen to our story, and to help us realize that we are not walking in circles but moving towards the house of peace and joy.  This is the great mystery of Christmas that continues to give us comfort and consolation: we are not alone on our journey.  The God of love who gave us life sent his only Son to be with us at all times and in all places, so that we never have to feel lost in our struggles but always can trust that he walks with us.

The challenge is to let God be who he wants to be.  A part of us clings to our aloneness and does not allow God to touch us where we are most in pain.  Often we hide from him precisely those places in ourselves where we feel guilty, ashamed, confused, and lost.  Thus we do not give him a chance to be with us where we feel most alone.

Christmas is the renewed invitation not to be afraid and to let him – whose love is greater than our own hearts and minds can comprehend – be our companion.
~Henri Nouwen from Gracias: A Latin American Journal

13 Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. 14 They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. 15 As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them;
 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32 They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
Luke 24: 13-15, 31-32

I tend to walk through life blinded to what is really important, essential and necessary.  Self-absorbed,  immersed in my own troubles and concerns, I stare down at my own feet as I take each step, rather than looking forward at the road ahead.

Instead, I could be enrapt and listening to the Companion who has always walked beside me.

This living breathing walking God on the road to Emmaus feeds us from His word. I hunger for even more, my heart burning within me.  

Jesus makes plain how He Himself addresses my most basic needs:
He is the bread of life so I am fed.
He is the living water so I no longer thirst.
He is the light of dawn so I am never left in darkness.
He shares my yoke so my burden is easier.
He clothes me with righteousness so I am never naked.
He cleanses me when I am at my most soiled and repugnant.
He is the open door–always welcoming, with a room prepared for me.

So when I encounter Him along the road of my life — even if I don’t seem to be making progress, staying frozen in the same place —  I need to be ready to recognize him, listen, invite Him in to stay, share whatever I have with Him. When He breaks bread and hands me my piece, I want to accept it with open eyes of gratitude, knowing the gift He hands me is nothing less than Himself and I’ll never be the same again. I hunger for even more, my heart burning within me.  

Advent 2023 theme
…because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high 
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song

I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on’ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

When Mary birthed Jesus ’twas in a cow’s stall
With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all
But high from God’s heaven, a star’s light did fall
And the promise of ages it then did recall.

If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing
A star in the sky or a bird on the wing
Or all of God’s Angels in heaven to sing
He surely could have it, ’cause he was the King

I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on’ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
~Appalachian Carol

Leaving Deep Tracks

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A life should leave
deep tracks:
ruts where she
went out and back
to get the mail
or move the hose
around the yard;
where she used to
stand before the sink,
a worn-out place;
beneath her hand
the china knobs
rubbed down to
white pastilles;
the switch she
used to feel for
in the dark
almost erased.
Her things should
keep her marks.
The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space—
however small—
should be left scarred
by the grand and
damaging parade.
Things shouldn’t
be so hard.
~Kay Ryan “Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard” from The Niagra River

“The passage of a life should show…”

Since losing my friend Sara unexpectedly a month ago, I’ve thought a lot about the deep tracks she left behind. Traces of her life will forever mark her husband and children and grandchildren. They follow her pathways in her large farmhouse kitchen from sink to stove to cupboard to table. Her garden and orchard display her obvious affection for things that bloom and fruit while her wrap-around porch mirrors her love of sitting and witnessing it all.

Most of all her tracks are showing up on so many broken hearts, where we still feel her presence. Although I realize she is truly gone from this world, it is as if the season suddenly changed in response to her leaving. The misty mornings seem weary, the trees are now bare, the frost has been thick and a north wind has started to blow. Before too long, we’ll be remembering her boot steps in the barnyard snow.

No one Sara touched has been left abraded or scarred from her use. She was far too gentle in her touch; she worked hard not to leave traces of where she had been, as determined as she was to avoid attention. Her intention was to always remain in the background so others could shine. Now that she is gone, the background itself has been changed. The passage of her life will not dim the light she focused on her family and friends and the patients who loved her.

She wouldn’t want it to be this hard without her here.
But it is.