Scioto Snow

Prints cross ice;

imagine a doe

coaxed to the river,

enveloped in lust

and white.

Gloved fingers,

breath exhaled

like anxious chimneys;

all of me

in your pocket.

We thrust low,

confound the cold,

unable to see beyond

the crosshatch of blue ash

and sycamore.

Wonder how

this flux can survive;

fresh unbodied rush,

metallic, more feverish
than spring.

tk/November 2014



Exquisite read by R.A.D. Stainforth...

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April

Daffodils under;

lace flung reckless to the cold,

bare green splayed.

What are you wearing?

Blades of grass act as informants;

buds heed innocent faces,

pretend to be plastic.

Winter is high on the lash;

sends April running to the lavatory,

licks speed from her hand.

I kiss. You stay kissed.

It will melt soon enough;

every bit squeezed, drowned,

trickled down, murmuring.

tk/April 2014

R.A.D. Stainforth enjoys a glass of wine...contemplates April...

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*photo: Finland, 1968, by George F. Mobley

Settlement of Snow

The Mill, 1964, Andrew Wyeth

Boots tramp your arrival.

I am aware of you. 

Wyeth stillness lies

in the bodice of my gown.

Unlace the corset with gloved hands

to find the curvature of the earth.

Fire hisses.

Impatient embers

find their way into everything we know.

The room is overwarm.

Gathered branches tumble to the floor.

There is no script, no canvas.
This is no ordinary happiness. 

tk/January 2014







Exquisite read by R.A.D. Stainforth: 

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Doesn't everybody name their hats?

It comes as no surprise that I like hats. I wear them year round, but it's especially fun to wear them in winter. With the approaching Polar Vortex 2, little brother of Polar Vortex, I will most likely be wearing a woolly hat indoors. It's good to have a proper cold winter. I've enjoyed Edna, my vintage poodle hat, named after my dear friend, Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Not many wear them in my neck of the woods, so I get pleasant looks of surprise when I show up around town in wild vintage hats. It's no fun to dress without accessories. In 1950s rural Indiana, a woman dared not show up to church without her best hat, pocketbook, and gloves. My favorite thing to do in church, besides eating Grandpa's butterscotch Lifesavers, was to look for Margaret Mabbit, the woman with the feathered hat and bright red lipstick. When we rose to sing the doxology, she looked like a lovely Sendakian parrot, happily singing on her perch.

“What the hell is that?" I laughed.
"It's my fox hat."
"Your fox hat?"
"Yeah, Pudge. My fox hat."
"Why are you wearing your fox hat?" I asked.
"Because no one can catch the motherfucking fox.” 

 ― John Green, Looking for Alaska 

Mad in January...

Lots of people go mad in January. Not as many as in May, of course. Nor June. But January is your third most common month for madness. 

― Karen Joy Fowler, Sarah Canary 

January Barn 
Dublin, Ohio

Reflection

Another lovely read by R.A.D. Stainforth...

I see myself

as you might see me ―

move room to rug,

dream at each window,

make note of my reflection

and save it for later.

I murmur sleep-talk,

say only the most important words,

because you know

enough of the others,

to understand me completely,

as you do night trees

that brush the same stretched sky ―

the lucid winter sough.

tk/January 2013

image by Daniel Murtagh

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snow

I am younger each year at the first snow. When I see it, suddenly, in the air, all little and white and moving; then I am in love again and very young and I believe everything. 


―Anne Sexton, in a letter to W.D. Snodgrass, November 28, 1958

I'm ready for the hard crust...

Along the hard crust of deep snows,

To the secret, white house of yours,

So gentle and quiet – we both

Are walking, in silence half-lost.

And sweeter than all songs, sung ever,

Are this dream, becoming the truth,

Entwined twigs’ a-nodding with favor,

The light ring of your silver spurs...  

Along the Hard Crust 

Anna Akhmatova, 1917

(translated by Yevgeny Bonver, 2002)

I've been in a bit of a Russian mode on my Facebook wall this week. It must be because the cold weather finally arrived in Central Ohio, and I wore my furry Zhivago hat, for the first time this season.  We had a few flurries, but they didn't really count as a first snow, which I always look forward to with much anticipation.

The Russian poet Anna Akhmatova also came to mind.  Her writing was banned, unofficially, from 1925 to 1940, and then again after the end of  WWII.  Unlike many of her literary contemporaries, she never considered flight into exile.  Persecuted by the Stalinist government, she was prevented from publishing, regarded as a dangerous enemy, but at the same time so popular, even Stalin would not risk attacking her directly. 

I love this portrait of Akhmatova by Russian cubist painter, Nathan Altman.

limbo

After the melt, winter, dull

with Novocaine, lacking a proper taste

of death, waits in patient homage

for Nature to resume her pleasantries.

The insufficient poison of ice,

is swallowed-up in mushroom sky,

and leaves behind a chamois world,

a limb-strewn, cardboardy puzzle,

dirty as a pillowcase. She paces,

obtuse, in the squalor of good

intentions, scotch-taped, ephemeral, 

in an arborglyph of days.

Tess Kincaid

February 2011

Would you like me to read it to you?

sloppy

February Thaw, 1920, Charles Burchfield

Main Street, Salem, Winter Day, 1917

Like most in the Midwest, we've had an unusually cold, snow-laden winter. I have loved every minute; breakfasting around the fire, furry hats, fat woolly socks, steaming homemade soups and the pristine monochrome view from my frozen manor windows. Everyone seems anxious for spring, but I dread the sloppy thaw. Main Street, Salem, Winter Day, 1917, by one of my favorites, Ohio surrealist Charles Burchfield, captures this winter perfectly.

Most of Burchfield's (1893-1967) works were inspired by the rural surroundings in his hometown of Salem, in northeast Ohio, many from his own backyard. Dynamically working with watercolor, his paintings have a broad, mystic quality I absolutely adore. Burchfield is regarded as one of the key figures in early American Modernism and one of America’s masters of watercolor. I make it a habit to look for his pieces when I visit my local Columbus Museum of Art.

North Wind in March, 1960-66

Orion in December, 1959

It's seven degrees here in Central Ohio as we speak.  The manor's old heat pipes are knocking and the radiators hot.  Jack Frost was here.  I remember being fascinated with frost on the kitchen windows of my grandparents' house in rural Indiana, and my grandmother telling me the lovely artwork was evidence that Jack had visited in the night.



In English folklore, Jack Frost appears as an elfish creature who personifies crisp, cold, winter weather, a variant of Father Winter, also known as "Old Man Winter". Some believe this representation originated in Germanic folklore specifically in the Anglo-Saxon and Norse winter customs. Tradition holds Jack Frost responsible for leaving frosty crystal patterns on windows on cold mornings, also known as window frost or fern frost.

Apparently Jack was trying to tell me something with his big letter 'e'.  He also left a beautiful image of a Christmas tree, as well has some of the most elegant fern frost. I love this little poem by Janet Frame, from her collection of poems The Pocket Mirror, 1967. I wish I had written it.


Cold Snap


It was the timed wave the toffee-wave
breaking where the cold-water cup
was a cliff of clean tooth
tasting the syrup of decay.

It is the secret frost feeding the night
the ripe as winter sweet set
like ice (when cold cut in squares)
of havoc for the summer's tooth.


Janet Frame

No hawk hangs over in this air:
The urgent snow is everywhere.
The wing adroiter than a sail
Must lean away from such a gale,
Abandoning its straight intent,
Or else expose tough ligament
And tender flesh to what before
Meant dampened feathers, nothing more.
Forceless upon our backs there fall
Infrequent flakes hexagonal,
Devised in many a curious style
To charm our safety for a while,
Where close to earth like mice we go
Under the horizontal snow.


Edna St. Vincent Millay

photos:  Willow Manor, December 12, 2010

contented inmate

I've been happily imprisoned in winter for the last few weeks. The
manor has taken on a fabulous Zhivagoesque atmosphere, like one
of John Box's wax creations. Of course, you know I am in snow
heaven. The lovely icicle I showed you last week, now touches the
ground. It measures a deadly nine feet long and nine inches wide, a
record setter, for sure, in the manor book of ice.



Deadly Cold


I know a way to kill a man
and leave no trace.

A clandestine lobotomy
perfectly performed
.
with a crystal ice pick
melting slowly,
silent and odorless;

ingenious homicide.



willow, 2010

(with a bit of inspiration from Walter Mitty)

the woods are lovely, dark and deep

Okay, back up to last Tuesday, the 22nd. Remember that load of snow that landed on the east coast? Well, one of my little ships was stranded in an airport, with no flights out until Christmas Eve. So, the resourceful little ship boarded a train and headed west. We, in turn, hopped in our trusty dark green Land Rover and headed east. It was a beautiful wintry road trip.

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there's some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Robert Frost

what i've been up to

Things have quieted down at the manor, now that one of my little
ships has left port. A wonderful time was had by all. Thank you all
for your dear holiday greetings. I'll slowly be making my way down
your street in the bloggyhood this week, but right now, I'm
recuperating, in my woolly socks, in one of my favorite spots; curled
up in front of a toasty fire with my good friend, Edna St. Vee.

Here's one of my faves:

Winter Night

Pile high the hickory and the light

Log of chestnut struck by the blight.

Welcome-in the winter night.

The day has gone in hewing and felling,

Sawing and drawing wood to the dwelling

For the night of talk and story-telling.

These are the hours that give the edge

To the blunted axe and the bent wedge,

Straighten the saw and lighten the sledge.

Here are question and reply,

And the fire reflected in the thinking eye.

So peace, and let the bob-cat cry.

Edna St. Vincent Millay