Searching the Present for the Past

 

Two Small Winter Poems

 

Waking In a Snow Globe

The wild wind tipped the world

upside down while I was sleeping.

Now, snow catches in tree-caught gusts of air

that blow small birds off course

and set the wind chimes swinging.

High above the spinning white,

the sun is prying the clouds apart,

loosing snowy feathers from the downy puffs,

until the air itself is made of silver and gold.

Winter Day

Snow is falling all around,

it swirls and eddies to the ground,

it makes a kind of whispery sound,

as is comes tumbling down.

Mystery

With all the Bernie mitten memes circulating the internet, I found myself thinking about mittens and remembered this poem from my years in the classroom teaching poetry. It was winter term and one second grader said, "It's cold out. Make up a poem about mittens." So I did.

Mystery

I found a mitten in the snow,

just one, just thumb and hand,

and stripes of red and green and white

around the mitten band.

I don't know how it came to be

alone and in the snow,

or where the other one might be

and how was I to know?

perhaps it from a pocket fell,

perhaps a child lost it,

perhaps it kept a snowman's hand

from getting cold and frosted.

I hung it from a bushy branch

that grew there on the lawn,

and next day when I went to look

the mitten? It was gone.

 

Forever Winter

 

 

Perspective

In early 2000, I returned to school to earn a Masters of Fine Arts in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, VT. My roommate was a sturdy woman from Michigan. Both of us were used to the cold and often during that first winter semester we rose at 6 a.m. and booted, hatted, and mittened, we walked for 45 minutes before breakfast.

One chilly day we decided to walk into the town to fetch a couple of gallons of drinking water. We bundled up as usual and walked the half mile down the hill to the store. There were very few cars on the road and still fewer people. In fact, we hadn’t seen a single soul until we entered the store. At the clang of the bell over the door, the young clerk looked up in surprise. We grabbed two gallon jugs of water each and approached her, smiling. She rang us up and then asked, “Are you guys from the college?” We said we were and she shook her head. “Did you drive down?” she asked. We said, no, we’d walked. Why?

“I’ve heard there’s some strange folks up there,” she told us. “Who else would walk down the hill for water when it’s 40 below zero?”

Roomie and I looked at each other. 40 below? Really? A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. The hike back uphill seemed much colder than the walk down and by the time we reached our dormitory, half the water in each jug was frozen.

My outdoor thermometer this morning read 3° and the wind chill is bringing the temperature down to a balmy -13°. But, I’m running low on milk – anyone up for a walk today?