stark, sober clarity.
but there is an invitation extended in this stark sobriety, necessitating love and consciousness, warm woolen blankets and poetry, thick stews and storytelling…
i listen to my bones, to the bones of an aching world, the bones of the earth itself, and i understand suffering
in this spaciousness, i find myself silently spinning a cocoon, breath and light-filled, enveloping me, even as i resist the vulnerability of becoming nothing but air
From -21 to 56 in a week.
Water is running down the slope of the hill toward the house, serpentine-like, under the snow, appearing like the silvery stretchmarks across the flesh of a pregnant mother.
“Flood warnings,” we’re told, and sometimes delivery leads to a flood, as my cousin’s did, and she almost died, right there in the hospital, because the bleeding was on the inside, and they already had the baby.
How so are we, like #45, grabbing what we want while disregarding the essential sovereignty of the life-giver… water, soil, air, woman, yoni, breast.
~
On Sunday afternoon, we took a family walk up our wooded road, and our way, we had to step aside to let a truck pass.
I watched as a load of cordwood passed me by and wondered if he ever lost any, and wouldn’t it be nice if he did so while passing my driveway.
It’s been a cold, cold winter, and we’ve burned through more wood than we typically do, which must why someone is ordering a cord this late in the season; and also explains my excessive cord envy, further expressed as I coveted another neighbor’s neatly stacked piles as we walk by their home.
The truck passed us again on our way back down MacArthur Road, and I looked, but there wasn’t a single log remaining in the bed.
Casey has long cut down our wood himself, and its grueling work without a horse or a tractor, and I feel a growing affection for his labor and the way it warms us through winter, and also, I think about how much simpler it would be to turn a dial, and a lot less sweeping too, and less angst about whether it’s dry enough or will last or will burn our house down.
“Why don’t you just turn on the lights,” my son says when he arrives home from school to a dark, candlelit house; and I guess it’s the same with trading in the woodstove for a dial, it would rob me of the intimacy of warming not just my toes but my soul.
~
What if I, like the metal roof on our timber frame–exposed to a season with more than a dozen hours of frozen darkness–also opened to the morning light, letting it warm me through, until in one big gush, I released the weight I’d carried through the cold…
february:
I wake, in the dark, and reach my foot across the flannel to see if it’s morning. The warmth of his thigh is my reply. “Go back to sleep,” I say, but I’m 54. I no longer listen. (Did I ever?) I lay there in the dark, wondering why. Have I had enough sleep already? Do I need to pee? What day is it? Is it the weekend? I lift my head to make out the numbers on his clock. It’s not even 5. Just then, Jimmy Cloud arrives, and I remember that yesterday was Wednesday, a snow day. Must be a lot; it sounds like the front loader. He lights up the woods out my window, and I wonder what the foxes make of it all. Beep. beep. beep. Are they asleep in their den or out hunting? I haven’t seen them since the babies grew up. Jimmy plows for a good long while, and when I feel Casey begin to stir, I get up to pee. He gets up then too.”I might as well stay up,” he says. I listen as the stairs creak as he heads down to start the fire. Later, he brings me rose tea, and I invite him back to bed to cuddle.
~
And also, yesterday, while putting on my rose shirt, in preparation for a weekend of writing & meditation, a paper wasp stung me on the heart, through the flesh of my breast…
~
Must be windy. Or a UPS drop off. Or is it a bear? I’ve been seeing posts about bears. I’m trying to meet this deadline. It sounds like its trying to get in. Maybe it’s just the shovels on the porch falling over.
Oh my gosh, I hear it walking around the house. Maybe it’s a robber.
I close my computer. Grab the phone to look like I’m calling the police.
(Oh, right… it’s just the sound of snow pounding off the roof.)
~
This Vermont Life 