Tag: Snow

January’s Menu

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January’s drop-down menu
leaves everything to the imagination:
splotch the ice, splice the light,
remake the spirit…

Just get on with it,
doing what you have to do
with the gray palette that lies
to hand. The sun’s coming soon.

A future, then, of warmth and runoff,
and old faces surprised to see us.
A cache of love, I’d call it,
opened up, vernal, refreshed.
~Sidney Burris “Runoff”

photo of hair ice taken by Laura Reifel

When the calendar finally reaches this last day of January, resplendent in its grayest pallor, I have to realize there are six weeks of winter yet ahead.

This past month, nature offered many options on the drop-down menu.
Take your pick:
soupy foggy mornings,
drizzly mid-days,
crisp northeast winds with sub-zero wind chill,
unexpected snow dumps with icy rain,
balmy southerlies with flooding,
too many soggy soppy puddly evenings.

Every once in awhile there was a special on the menu:
icy spikes on grass blades,
frozen droplets on birch branches,
hair ice on wood,
crystallized weeds like jewelry in the sun,
a pink flannel blanket sunrise,
an ocean-of-orange sunset.

I realize January’s gray palette is merely preparation for what comes next. There is Love cached away, and as spring is slowly revealed, it will not let me go.

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Winter Kitties

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White cat Winter
prowls
the farm,
tiptoes
soft
through withered corn,
creeps
along low walls
of stone,
falls asleep
beside
the barn.
~Tony Johnson “White Cat Winter”

Salt shining behind its glass cylinder.
Milk in a blue bowl. The yellow linoleum.
The cat stretching her black body from the pillow.
The way she makes her curvaceous response to the small, kind gesture.
Then laps the bowl clean.
Then wants to go out into the world
where she leaps lightly and for no apparent reason across the lawn,
then sits, perfectly still, in the grass.
I watch her a little while, thinking:
what more could I do with wild words?
I stand in the cold kitchen, bowing down to her.
I stand in the cold kitchen, everything wonderful around me.
~Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems

Cat, if you go outdoors, you must walk in the snow.
You will come back with little white shoes on your feet,
little white shoes of snow that have heels of sleet.
Stay by the fire, my Cat.  Lie still, do not go.
See how the flames are leaping and hissing low,
I will bring you a saucer of milk like a marguerite,
so white and so smooth, so spherical and so sweet –
stay with me, Cat. Outdoors the wild winds blow.

Outdoors the wild winds blow, Mistress, and dark is the night,
strange voices cry in the trees, intoning strange lore,
and more than cats move, lit by our eyes green light,
on silent feet where the meadow grasses hang hoar –
Mistress, there are portents abroad of magic and might,
and things that are yet to be done.  Open the door!
~Elizabeth Coatsworth “On a Night of Snow”

I know folks who worry about our farm cats’ well-being during the recent harsh winter weather. Our farm cats don’t know what it is like to live in a house, and certainly know nothing about the use of kitty litter boxes. They are independent souls, used to being on outdoor patrol and never question the conditions of their employment to manage all aspects of vermin control.

The cats own the barns, pure and simple. This is not a matter for debate among the farm dogs (who also live in the barns during very cold weather) or from the horses, or from us farmers who come and go doing the feeding and watering and cleaning. We all bow down to the cats’ supremacy. Four farm cats distribute themselves among several buildings according to who they like and who they don’t like and then settle in for the duration. They scoot in and out as they please as we open and close the big barn doors against the chill winds and happily lap up whatever treats we bring them.

So please don’t worry. Our cats and other critters are doing just fine this winter. It’s the two humans here who are creakier while we navigate the snow and ice and must bundle up head to toe to face the northeast wind.

As wonderful as farm living can be, it is always more challenging in the winter, especially since it is up to us to supply our own treats…

photo by Nate Gibson
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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”

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Fixing Eyes on the Unseen – Realizing the Snow is Melting…

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Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.
Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.
But there’s music in us. Hope is pushed down
but the angel flies up again taking us with her.
The summer mornings begin inch by inch
while we sleep, and walk with us later
as long-legged beauty through
the dirty streets. It is no surprise 
that danger and suffering surround us.
What astonishes is the singing.
We know the horses are there in the dark
meadow because we can smell them,
can hear them breathing. 
Our spirit persists like a man struggling 
through the frozen valley
who suddenly smells flowers
and realizes the snow is melting
out of sight on top of the mountain,
knows that spring has begun.
~Jack Gilbert “Horses at Midnight Without a Moon”

As if —
we are walking through the darkest valley, still stuck in the throes of winter, and catch a whiff of a floral scent, or a hint of green grass, or hear the early jingle bells song of peeper frogs in the wetlands, or feel the warm breath of horses puffing steam at night.

As if —
there is hope on the other side, refreshment and renewal and rejoicing only around the corner.

As if —
things won’t always be frozen or muddy or barren, that something is coming behind the snowdrops and crocus.

The snow is melting, imperceptibly, but melting nonetheless.
And that, in turn, melts me…

This year’s Lenten theme:
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4: 18

Last Ebbing Light

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Clouded with snow
The cold winds blow,
And shrill on leafless bough
The robin with its burning breast
Alone sings now.

   The rayless sun,
Day’s journey done,
Sheds its last ebbing light
On fields in leagues of beauty spread
Unearthly white.

   Thick draws the dark,
And spark by spark,
The frost-fires kindle, and soon
Over that sea of frozen foam
Floats the white moon.
~ Walter De la Mare, “Winter” from  By Heart

Roused by a faint glow
between closed slats
of window blinds
at midnight

Our bedroom suffused
in ethereal glow
from a moon-white sky,
mixing a million stars and snowflakes

A snow light covers all,
settling gently around us,
tucking in the drifting corners
of a downy comforter

while heaven comes to earth,
plumps the pillows,
cushions the landscape,
and illuminates our longing hearts.

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Dawn on our Darkness: Snowbound Snowblind Longing

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The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.
John 3:8

To look at the last great self-portraits of Rembrandt or to read Pascal or hear Bach’s B-minor Mass is to know beyond the need for further evidence that if God is anywhere, he is with them, as he is also with the man behind the meat counter, the woman who scrubs floors at Roosevelt Memorial, the high-school math teacher who explains fractions to the bewildered child. And the step from “God with them” to Emmanuel, “God with us,” may not be as great as it seems.

What keeps the wild hope of Christmas alive year after year in a world notorious for dashing all hopes is the haunting dream that the child who was born that day may yet be born again even in us and our own snowbound, snowblind longing for him.
~Frederick Buechner from A Room Called Remember

God gave us all a garden once
and walked with us at eve
that we might know him face to face
with no need to believe.

But we denied and hid from Him,
concealing our own shame,
yet still He came and looked for us,
and called us each by name.

He found us when we hid from Him,
He clothed us with His grace.
But still we turned our backs on Him
and would not see His face.

So now, He comes to us again,
not as a Lord most high,
but weak and helpless as we are,
that we might hear Him cry.

And He who clothed us in our need,
lies naked in the straw,
that we might wrap Him in our rags
when once we fled in awe.

The strongest comes in weakness now,
a stranger to our door,
the King forsakes His palaces
and dwells among the poor.

And where we hurt, He hurts with us,
and when we weep, He cries.
He knows the heart of all our hurts,
the inside of our sighs.

He does not look down from up above,
but gazes up at us,
that we might take Him in our arms,
He always cradles us.

And if we welcome Him again,
with open hands and heart,
He’ll plant His garden deep in us,
the end from which we start.

And in that garden, there’s a tomb,
whose stone is rolled away,
where we and everything we’ve loved
are lowered in the clay.

But lo! the tomb is empty now,
and clothed in living light,
His ransomed people walk with One
who came on Christmas night.

So come, Lord Jesus, find in me
the child you came to save,
stoop tenderly with wounded hands
and lift me from my grave.

Be with us all, Emmanuel,
and keep us close and true,
be with us till that kingdom comes
where we will be with You.
~Malcolm Guite — “A Tale of Two Gardens”

Heaven could not hold God. 

Even though He is worshiped by angels, it is enough for Him to be held in His mother’s arms, His face kissed, His tummy full, to be bedded in a manger in lantern light.

It is enough for Him, as He is enough for us — even born as one of us, poor as we are — snowbound and ice-locked in our longing for something – anything – more. Our empty hearts fill with Him who came down when heaven could not hold Him any longer.

Imagine that. It is enough to melt us to readiness.

This year’s Advent theme “Dawn on our Darkness” is taken from this 19th century Christmas hymn:

Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,
dawn on our darkness and lend us your aid.
Star of the east, the horizon adorning,
guide where our infant Redeemer is laid.
~Reginald Heber -from “Brightest and Best”

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Good to Melt

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How exactly good it is
to know myself
in the solitude of winter,
my body containing its own
warmth, divided from all
by the cold; and to go
separate and sure
among the trees cleanly
divided, thinking of you
perfect too in your solitude,
your life withdrawn into
your own keeping
–to be clear, poised
in perfect self-suspension
toward you, as though frozen.
And having known fully the
goodness of that, it will be
good also to melt.
~Wendell Berry “The Cold” from New Collected Poems

It is too easy to find comfort in solitude
in yet another waning pandemic winter,
with trust and friendship eroded,
to stay protected one from another
by screens and windows and masks.

Standing apart can no longer be an option
as we long for reconnection;
the time has come for the melt,
for a re-blending of moments
full of meals and singing and hugs.

We’ll find our way out of the cold.
We’ll find our way to trust.
We’ll find our way back to one another.

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