not free
Dense clouds, thick fog - a night above freezing. Snow sticks. We roll it into a ball so big we can’t roll it any more
and top it with two more for a snowman twice the size of the one we made yesterday.
The sun comes out. Haze lifts away into the sky.
Driving, everything still seems lifeless - gray, hard-edged, motionless - but for the birds. Swirls of black dots spin long, curlicue threads in all directions, all higher. Three large geese cut a diagonal over 8 lanes of traffic
to remind me I am not free.
softening snow
Softening snow - enough to make a small snowman, and lots of snowballs, and get hit by them without sting: a quick chill to my face, a cold drip down my neck.
There is more moisture in the air, released from melting snow. It’s almost fog, but just haze. The sun does come out, eventually, but just barely; not the small, hard, bright sun of midwinter, but blurred and softened into pastels, blending into sky… clouds… snow.
rubbery happy
A sleepier-eyed moon this morning, sleepier than Tuesday’s, and lower in the sky. Maybe the warmer weather is making it harder to wake up.
Since it’s going to be warmer today, probably above freezing, we go ice skating early, before the sun hits the ice. Cool morning air; legs, lungs, heart pumping from pointless speed; laughing amateurish - almost graceless - turns.
Afterwards I’m wobbly-legged and rubbery, but happy, very happy.
stiff wind
A stiff wind blows straight from the south, hard and unwavering. At city hall, at the post office, flags strain at their poles. Old snow-dust flies from rooftops, hits the windshield and melts into bright beads of light. One swipe of the wiper blades and they’re gone.
warm under snow
I dream of being warm under the snow. It’s a tight cover at first, but it soon opens up big enough to stand up underneath, and include (most of) a tree or two, too. It is warm and green and dry and (somehow) sunny under the snow - early summer. The cats and I play until I wake up.
sleepy-eyed & squeaky
A heavy-lidded, sleepy-eyed moon can’t get up over the treetops in the morning and quickly goes back to bed.
With the clouds gone, the temperature drops. Hard crystals don’t give under the pressure of my foot but grind against each other. Snow squeaks underfoot.
there’s always next year
At the end of my rope - 2007, and at the edge of the unknown - 2008. I’m leaving a lot of loose ends behind this year and next year feels more unknown than usual.
I eat well today:
Oatmeal for breakfast, cooked in a pot, with a little brown sugar and cinnamon.
Then dinner of spinach salad with strawberries and blueberries, a French leek pie, and a delicate sauvignon blanc - and even some baclava for my sweet tooth.
But it’s not enough. I blow it in the evening with potato chips and dip.
There’s always next year.
joyful
Driving home after Vespers today I think back a couple of hours to before I left home, and the coffee drink I enjoyed, and it occurs to me that I wouldn’t mind doing it again. I won’t - I can’t - do it again when I get home,
not exactly, because it’s not about the drink. It’s about reliving that moment.
And then I realize that I wouldn’t mind singing Vespers again, or going back earlier, to lunch (a baked potato), or breakfast (fried eggs and toast), or Mass. The simplest little things have been a pleasure - reading the paper, feeding the cats, getting up, sleeping with cats, and so on back into yesterday. I would happily do it all
again, if I could, and I feel - there’s no other word for it - joyful.
What was, was. What is, is. What will be?
editing
Brightening sky - everything a bright gray through light snow.
Gray squirrels move like living punctuation marks in the snow. A comma suddenly becomes an exclamation point
and three semicolons go flying up a tree.
There are no letters at all until the crows arrive. First, two groups of four I’ve seen before, and then a few outsiders, three or four. Composing short poems as they peck for corn, they are swept up all at once then put back down again for more. But soon they’re gone for good, leaving only a few stray apostrophes on a blank page.
upside down
White ground, black sky - clouds so thick in the morning, the sky was almost black. It’s difficult to wake up.
Albino white squirrels are normal, perfectly camouflaged.
Gray trees branch and branch and branch again until their twiglets become clouds.
