Let it Snow Again

The Weather Service is calling for more snow starting tonight. We are on the southern edge of the storm so it's hard to say what we'll get. It could be 10 to 20 inches, or not. We just got shoveled out to the street, the mailman delivered mail today, and now we'll have to start all over again.

I don't remember where I found the following poem. I looked up Jesse Winchester today and discovered he is a singer-songwriter, and these are song lyrics. I've never heard his stuff, but I can totally get behind the thought he expresses.

Jesse Winchester

Snow

Yes it can!

Now you know what they say about snowflakes
How there ain't no two the same
Well, all them flakes look alike to me
Every one is a dirty shame

My ears are cold my feet are cold
Bermuda stays on my mind
And I'm here to say that if winter comes
Then spring is a ways behind

Let It Snow

What a winter this has been for snow! First we had the big storm right before Christmas. Next we had a small snow in, was it January? Then last Friday and Saturday we got two feet of snow, a real blizzard. Some winters we don't shovel at all, but this past weekend we shoveled for hours. Thank goodness my son spent the weekend with us and helped his two old parents clear the driveway out to the street.

He also shoveled a path to the bird feeder so we could continue to keep the birds happy. We've had two pairs of cardinals, a red headed woodpecker, a blue jay, and dozens of smaller birds taking turns at the feeder.

Now the Weather Service is calling for another 6 to 10 inches (or more) of snow starting tomorrow afternoon. The Federal government closed today and tomorrow so none of us has to go to work, and there is plenty of food in the house. Things aren't going too badly.

I found this bit of poetry by Ralph Waldo Emerson recently, and it seems an appropriate time to share.

From The Snowstorm

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Painting a Room

My father could paint a window frame without masking tape and not leave a spot of paint on the glass. He had steady hands, and incredible patience.

My painting is more reckless, and I use lots of masking tape, but I am generally satisfied with the results. I painted a small room over the Christmas holidays to house my treadmill and it looks pretty good. I’m having bamboo flooring installed now that the painting is done, and I will be ready to start my new exercise program.

The woman in the following poem is painting a space that she has lived in for 10 years and is leaving. She is already feeling the loss of the life she leaves behind. In a way she is painting over that life in preparation for starting over somewhere else. I was thinking of this poem as I painted my new exercise room, and thinking of my father, who recently moved to a VA home. At 96 he is starting over.

I found the poem on the Poetry 180 website, one of my favorite places to find new poetry.


Painting a Room

Katia Kapovich

Here on a March day in ‘89
I blanch the ceiling and walls with bluish lime.
Drop cloths and old newspapers hide
the hardwood floors. All my furniture has been sold,
or given away to bohemian friends.
There is nothing to eat but bread and wine.

An immigration visa in my pocket, I paint
the small apartment where I’ve lived for ten years.
Taking a break around 4 p.m.,
I sit on the last chair in the empty kitchen,
smoke a cigarette and wipe my tears
with the sleeve of my old pullover.
I am free from regrets but not from pain.

Ten years of fears, unrequited loves, odd jobs,
of night phone calls. Now they’ve disconnected the line.
I drop the ashes in the sink, pour turpentine
into a jar, stirring with a spatula. My heart throbs
in my right palm when I pick up the brush again.

For ten years the window’s turquoise square
has held my eyes in its simple frame.
Now, face to face with the darkening sky,
what more can I say to the glass but thanks
for being transparent, seamless, wide
and stretching perspective across the size
of the visible.

Then I wash the brushes and turn off the light.
This is my last night before moving abroad.
I lie down on the floor, a rolled-up coat
under my head. This is the last night.
Freedom smells of a freshly painted room,
of wooden floors swept with a willow broom,
and of stale raisin bread.

The Revenge of the Maple Tree

I finally had the maple tree in my front yard removed last summer. It was too big for the space, it kept the grass from growing, and the roots were threatening to crack my new driveway. I knew some day the limbs were going to take down the power lines to the house. Plus, every fall that maple dropped leaves all over the yard. So I paid an itinerant tree crew to remove it.

A month later I slipped on a wet leaf and broke my ankle in three places. Coincidence? I think not. I think the trees in the back yard heard the cries of distress as their colleague headed for the wood chipper and took their revenge when the opportunity presented.

The following poem speaks to cutting down a tree and also is a fine poem for a snowy winter day.

In winter in the woods alone
Against the trees I go.
I mark a maple for my own
And lay the maple low.

At four o’clock I shoulder axe
And in the afterglow
I link a line of shadowy tracks
Across the tinted snow.

I see for Nature no defeat
In one tree’s overthrow
Or for myself in my retreat
For yet another blow.


Robert Frost

My Mother Used to Say

My mother gave me a bit of wisdom one time when she was teaching me to iron. Ironing was a weekly chore in the days when everything you wore needed to be ironed, and I was probably eight or so when my mother decided I could learn to help.

I started with my Dad's white handkerchiefs, and was doing my best to make them perfect, when my mother suggested that I hurry things up a bit. I told her, "If it's worth doing at all, it's worth doing well."

"That's not true", she replied. "There are a lot of things in life worth doing whether you do them well or not. Some things are only worth a little bit of effort, and ironing handkerchiefs is one of them."

My mother also used to say, "All cats are grey in the dark." I never asked her how she knew.


This poem by Tess Gallagher always reminds me of my mother.

I Stop Writing the Poem

to fold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I’m still a woman.
I’ll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I’ll get back
to the poem. I’ll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there’s a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it’s done.

Happy Birthday Emily Dickinson

Today is Emily Dickinson's birthday, so I am sharing the following two poems. Emily Dickinson is one of my favorite poets, and Billy Collins is another.


Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes

by Billy Collins

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like swimmer’s dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women’s undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything—
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that Reason is a plank,
that Life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.


by Emily Dickinson:

Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile the winds
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.

Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!

Table Talk

My son and I were talking about favorite books recently and I remembered doing a blog entry on that once. I just went back and re-read it and I'm not sure I would change the list although I've read a lot of books since. If you want to read my list follow the link to my November 2005 Blog.

The question that came up with my son was why do we like some books and not others? I tried to explain why each of my choices was on the list, but sometimes we just like what we like.

My poem to share today is by Wallace Stevens.

Table Talk

Granted, we die for good.
Life, then, is largely a thing
Of happens to like, not should.

And that, too, granted, why
Do I happen to like red bush,
Gray grass and green-gray sky?

What else remains? But red,
Gray, green, why those of all?
That is not what I said:
Not those of all. But those.
One likes what one happens to like.
One likes the way red grows.

It cannot matter at all.
Happens to like is one
Of the ways things happen to fall.

Now it's your turn to share by sending me your list of favorite books.