When the sky is so blue
it hurts your eyes
When the air is so cold
it burns your breath
When the snow fills the lace
of the trees
When the sun is so bright
it blinds you
It is winter.
“Nothing burns like the cold.”
~ George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
Needle and thread,
once as necessary
as hammer and nail.
There was a time
when clothing, sewed by
a seamstress or tailor,
were sewed by hand
needle and thread
dipping and diving
through fabric
~ perhaps silk,
~ denim
~ or even a flour sack.
Those days are long gone,
my needle and thread
still needed for replacing
a button, mending a hole
in socks, or lifting a hem
in my convenient life.
“Most of the time occupied in sewing. It seems as if
there was no end of that branch of work in this house.”
~ Ellen Birdseye Wheaton, diary 1851
 |
| Photo taken December 27, 2027 |
I baked bread today,
the aroma of home
gentle in the air.
Outside snow was flying.
Not a soft silent drift but
busily covering
cars,
houses,
fences,
sidewalks,
all the remnants of autumn.
Dressing myself in
toque,
down jacket
and mitts,
with my much smaller shovel
I stepped out into the swirling snow.
~ the soft light kind.
Brushing my hand on the railing,
fine flakes flew away on
mischievous wind currents.
The silence of this snow day,
despite the wind,
brought me a sweet memory:
the bite of cold on nose and cheeks
took me to the skating rink.
Thoughts of making a snow man flew away
because the snow was too dry to
pack into the right shape.
(and I had no carrot or twig for a nose!)
“A snow day literally and figuratively falls from the sky,
unbidden, and seems like a thing of wonder.”
~ Susan Orlean, journalist and author
Author’s note: Snow this year has been very limited so far.
Listening to the news,
or a talk show, or seeing ads
for the latest technology,
I am stunned.
How did all this come about
and why?
The answers are
in the ‘cloud’.
Up in the air or
deep in the ocean,
so no more questions.
What I do know is that
miles to distant family are shortened.
Coming from pencil and paper,
a telephone on the wall with
a long coiling cord on a party line,
to a hand held phone and
a vast array of technological devices
is a joy, a tool, and an electronic
encyclopedia of knowledge;
not to mention the threat
of being tossed away!
Can we use our joy and
the work of our lives to
keep technology in its place?
As a tool, not an external mind?
“It was one thing to use computers as a tool,
quite another to let them do your thinking for you.”
~ Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red October
I am eager to find hope
in each moment.
Hope: such an illusive idea,
so easy to give up,
let go of or drift away from.
Some say hope is
for the young, not for
such as me that has
seen 78 years go by.
But I disagree.
Hope is for the moment,
not for the young or the old
or the many in-betweeners
that fill that great gap. Today I hoped
for good weather because I had
a long walk to take. My hope was dashed
by the wind and cold snow.
But did I give up?
No. I hoped for
strength in my legs and that
I was dressed warmly enough,
that the crossing lights would work,
that drivers would pay attention as I stepped out
and that I would recognize life all around me.
What do you hope for today?
“Once you choose hope, anything’s possible.”
~ Christopher Reeve
There is a gap
where words have forgotten
to flow ~ all crowded at the edges
like snow drifts around a frozen pond.
If I put on my white leather skates
with the sharp silver blades
I could set out on the ice and
carve a poem in it’s frigid surface.
Tonight my skates don’t fit and
the blades are dull. Tomorrow,
I will skate under the blue sky
as the sun sets in the west ~
a childhood dream that is
the imagining of my heart.
“Everything you can imagine is real.”
~ Pablo Picasso
All my past tomorrows
bump up against one another,
each one crying out
remember me!
remember me!
until my heart is bursting
to gather them all in a bouquet.
Those past tomorrows
hold another set of words:
“I’ll get it done tomorrow”.
And I wonder how many of those things
were set aside or reached completion,
put in the outbox.
And those that were set aside,
those promises that floated away,
were they the shading,
the colouring of my life
that I missed on one of my past tomorrows.
“Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today.
Inhabit your moments. Don’t rent them out to tomorrow.”
~ Jerry Spinelli, Love, Stargirl
