Tag: fallen

The cold grows colder, even as the days 
grow longer, February’s mercury vapor light 
buffing but not defrosting the bone-white 
ground, crusty and treacherous underfoot. 
This is the time of year that’s apt to put 
a hammerlock on a healthy appetite, 
old anxieties back into the night, 
insomnia and nightmares into play; 
when things in need of doing go undone 
and things that can’t be undone come to call, 
muttering recriminations at the door, 
and buried ambitions rise up through the floor 
and pin your wriggling shoulders to the wall; 
and hope’s a reptile waiting for the sun.
~Bill Christopherson “February”

Just when you think it is safe to go out in shirt sleeves and sweats, subzero wind chill blasts through your bravado and reminds you February is still WINTER on the calendar and in reality.

February can be a month of regret and recriminations, of “should-haves” and “should-not-haves” while waiting, frozen and immobile, for spring to bring us back to life. Like cold-blooded creatures, we need the sun to warm us up so we can move again. This sun today, bright as it is, only lights up our flaws and holes – no warmth whatsoever.

And it’s not just me struggling to stay upright in the storm. Our old red barn, waiting for its spring date with a talented rehab carpenter, hasn’t many roof shingles left after this latest blow, and a recent partial wall collapse in the wind prompted a neighbor to ask if we had meant to create a new door into our barn.

Uh, no.

The old barn is kind of like how I feel at times: lacking a decent foundation, a bit shaky on my underpinnings, a lot sagging in the middle, broad in the beam and drafty where I shouldn’t be.

So much to be shored up, fixed, patched and restored. So much need for a talented Carpenter who knows how to mend and strengthen the broken and fallen.