This is how I remember feeling most of the time growing up; the long January stretch during the winter’s duration when activities slowed down, retreat hung heavily on the branches of the bending trees, and the sounds of a lone neighbor chopping at the ice on a sidewalk were the only street noise.

Life was an odd combination of terror and invigoration…wanting to remain forever under thick blankets while at the same time wanting to stand outside late at night, when the snow actually crackled and split with cold; on those bitter evenings when I stood in the driveway for as long as I could; watching the empty chairs seated in the warm interior of the house, steam freezing on the windows; the porch screen door blanketed in sheets of white frozen wisp and stuck against the jamb.

Watching blue snow glitter brightly under the moon…eating scalding French fries with spicy mustard out of a paper cup as I walked home over the bridge; listening for the single strand of water still surging under the frozen water.

I could not feel the tips of my fingers while my tongue burned…lonely, under a winter white orb.

‘My goodness, you’re tall!’ he said while reaching across the table length for a cocktail napkin. ‘I mean tall in a good way, I mean’. He faltered slightly.

‘Thank you’, she replied. ‘I work hard at it’.

He looked at her.

“Work hard at what?’ He seemed genuinely puzzled.

‘At being tall’, she countered, reaching for her own napkin.

‘I work hard at being tall’.

He looked down at his plate and spent what felt to him to be an inordinate amount of time working out the patterns of food spread in front of him.

Dip, chips, mini-sandwiches, over priced water crackers; a glob of cheese spread at the plate’s edge. Looking up at her sheepishly, he tried again.

‘So, what do you do?’

She turned slightly to the left of him and glanced out over his shoulder at nothing. ‘I work at being tall’, she said. ‘I work very hard’.

It was the sort of conversation which at the root of it, lay far down the twisting rabbit trail of wanting to be anywhere else.

She stared out the large window at the edge of the snow covered balcony; the sloping yard sliding down to the edge of the grey crusted road edge. A lone bird swooped in the distance; buffeted against an icy wind.

It was the usual wintry day in January.

Perhaps today might be the day to learn to begin to spin sugar webs.

Standing resignedly at this rather vaguely appointed cocktail party, she decided it was time to leave.

She drifted quietly, web like…away from the table.

Driving the edge of the white flattened field; the tires hug the fine line between road and sloping dirt, tar and frozen earth.

The wide stretch of empty land is dotted with sharp beige stubs of cut corn stalks and vegetation, remnants of the past growing season, silent and dead as they lie stiff under the birthing sky of the new year.

A brutal burst of frigid air rises up rapidly from the ground and disperses frantically, widely…churning up mini whirly waughs of swirling snow, spinning like miniature tornadoes over patches of earth. To observe, to peer even for a moment inside the power of the icy gyrating air is to be witness to one of the mysteries of winter.

The road widens ahead of the car, leading toward the dark and jagged line of black and bare trees; the icy steam of frozen ozone rises into the sky; the tree line celebrates the beginning of the new year, clad in a smoking jacket, the upper growth puffing amiably above the earth’s flooring.

Sentinels rising up against the line of the field; the blackened trees put a stop, present an obstacle to the eternal spread of abandoned white fields and flatness.

They are our friends, these trees standing firm on this first day of the new year; planted decades ago by good souls; those determined individuals nurturing woodlands under whose shade they knew they would never take repose. These trees and those far away people; excellent beginnings today when the morning temperature rests at a chilly negative one; as the wind chill snarls around seeking whom it may devour.

Heading for the blackened tree line where our kindred spirits await…as the road widens ahead, leaving behind that which we know.

August 2022

Our blue moon is exhausted from exertion; shining brilliantly last night over darkened trees, sleeping houses and cooling land. She settles slowly way off somewhere behind the forest on a quiet Saturday dawn as she winks and nods a greeting to the new month. Morning yawns cautiously in reply. They find themselves together on the down side of nothing.

A time where the mind’s eye, rested and cleansed looks outward; far, far ahead to see the horizon uncluttered with tightly drawn squares, check marks, detailed lines of faces all demanding that something happen. On August the first, the day after the Blue Moon, nothing must happen. There is brewing coffee and porch lingering while listening to energized neighbors discuss methods of pulling rocks out of the front and side yard; a few vicious sneezes, and then silence.

Wherever those people linger who demand that we get busy with ‘doing’, may they linger elsewhere for just a little bit longer because our summer is not yet spent. The season turns just a touch more with that inevitable twisting down toward cooling ground, longer evenings and lengthening shadows.

In June we tossed aside notebooks, envisioning endless sand, puffy clouds, watermelon ice and corn dogs; this time it would last forever. But July always comes to an end. So soon, too soon Earth’s yellow orb cowers under the Blue Moon’s gaze and she blinks first and so soon must we. But not today. Not yet.

August’s first early dawn settles, just a touch reserved; waiting as the white curtains in the reading room billow and flap wildly, and over this rocky terrain we call home, wind chimes blow continually at the edge of this house on the hill. He labors with the land by 6:30; weeding and seeding and by mid morning I shall take him cold, iced lemon water because all seasons require kindness.

La Luna, you August moon. She drapes a creamed canopy over the small of one’s back. Tan lines shiver as heated aloed hands soften seared skin, cool sun’s promise and warm moonbeam’s silver lance. Sanded afternoons…yellow, grainy with lemony kisses…melt away emotion’s last defense…drops in a sloshing tide, dissolves amidst a swirl of crushed shells, stone and yesterday’s bruised memories. Benvenuti La Luna Bella.

Autumn in New York…clouds of olive and silver, miles of fields filled with blackened crackly sunflowers, their sun centers traded for black coal circles; burnt cookies on straw sticks, waving and bent in the chilly breeze. Wild pumpkin patches lie fallow under blue grey sky expanse. ‘Why does anyone buy pumpkins?’ he asks. ‘They’re all here, just sleeping in open fields…orange pumpkins, white pumpkins, yellow gourds…just waiting to be harvested’.

In the darkening heavens, angles of black birds wing their way south; honking and cawing; a large black arrow pointing away from the vagaries of the lake. At the road’s edge, in the soft green center of a sunken drainage gully…an onyx black cat is perfectly seated and calm; oblivious to traffic, watching oncoming headlights, attuned to the birds overhead…thinking about rodents, shadows…the warmth of his distant home.

The sweep of color wanes gently, slowly. What was in days past a brilliant carpeting of copper and scarlet, a bright leafy yellow ribbon encircling the neighborhood…shines now, briefly…only when strands of tired Autumn sunshine break through the clouds and drift downward.

Late afternoon, the rows of trees fold in on themselves and bow down under the darkening gloam.

They wait quietly for the promised wild winds which will shred their final hold on the branches, plummeting them to the damp soil where they eagerly await the opportunity to sleep forever…