NO MORE SNOW, PLEASE!

Nothing is more magical than snow falling, especially in late evening as night settles in and the snowlight begins to glow in the sky, covering everything with what seems like a glass bowl. I love the way the world looks outside my doors.

I do not love the cleanup afterward, though. We were lucky that several large limbs missed our car and that the one blocking our driveway was removable by us. We went without power for a couple of days two weeks ago, and while that was fun for a little while, I was glad when the lights came back on. This latest snow on Friday was delicate, falling like sifted flour, and my husband was able to clear the road fairly quickly next morning. The light coming through the lacework of branches Saturday dawn was beautiful.

So, here's to snow, in moderate amounts! And now, how about spring? To hell with the groundhog saying in groundhogese that we've 6 more weeks of winter. Or maybe he didn't say that at all. It's in how you interpret things, after all. Who knows what a groundhog thinks, if if he/she even thinks at all.

Sorry, didn't mean to diss groundhogs! I like the one that lives down the hill from us and hope that he has a long and happy life, away from the wheels of drunk students and other assorted maniacs who take the curve too fast.

Spring will come when it gets good and ready. The wind cutting through my wool scarf this morning made me hope it was getting ready! Here's a poem for the first shoot of green pushing up through the cold sod. I wrote it for Cathy Smith Bowers, our new Poet Laureate, after she visited me in Sylva last month.

(I've long been fascinated by how certain words "feel" in our mouths. Green, in this instance. And verde, how does it differ from our Anglo-Saxon green? It's more of a dance. Our "green" is a keening, a longing, maybe because of the long Nordic winters?? I also wanted to try to express how each poem wakes us up, makes us see again. )

Winter Noon

Sylva, North Carolina

(1/20/2001)

Verde, que te quiero verde....

(Green, how I want you green.. .)

‘ Federico Garcia-Lorca

for Cathy

We’ve seen how stems snap,

the leaves fall,

the rain soaks,

how ice weaves its blanket

around weeds and garden.

Now we raise our glasses

to what we see over the rooftops

of downtown: gray mountains waiting

beneath scales of cloud

like the ones we know fall

from our eyes

when we see

how each poem comes alive

in the midst of our cold times,

a small hook

that yearns through the mute

sod, our throats

tight with keening its

coming forth, the tip

of our tongues

against bedrock.

THE WORK OF WINTER

The Work of Winter (from www.ncarts.org)

By Kathryn Stripling Byer

This time of year poet Adrienne Rich’s words bubble up into my

consciousness: “The work of winter starts fermenting in my head / how with

the hands of a lover or a midwife / to hold back till the time is right.” She

urges to “trust roots” and “learn what an underground journey / has been,

might have to be; speak in a winter code / let fog, sleet, translate; wind, carry

them.”

This time of year my imagination wants to trust roots. To go underground

where so much of our inner journey takes place. In other words, it wants

time to think about the origins of memory and language. It’s a time when I

pull out my Oxford English Dictionary, hold up the magnifying glass and

look up the sources of words I use everyday. Where did they come from?

How have they changed? Inevitably, this always leads me back to the

question, “How have I changed?”

Because I recently turned sixty-five, a truth that women of a certain age are

not supposed to own up to, I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “old.” I

don’t feel old, I just feel as if I’ve been around for a long time, learned a lot

(though not enough) and that I’m in my prime.

When I turned to the origins of the word “old,” I found that it’s a very old

word indeed, and that its root many centuries ago meant “to nourish.”

Tracking it into Old English, I discovered that it becomes “oeld,” meaning

mature and lasting, something to be valued. The word appears numerous

times in medieval writings, and nearly always in a positive context.

Knowing this, I now no longer mind thinking of myself being described as

“old.”

When we begin to think about how our language began, we are drawn back

to a speech that sounded earthy, no trace of Latin in it. A language of

survivors in a cold, rough landscape. Over the years that language changed

by absorbing words from all over the planet, but mostly words from French

and Latin. Just about any word one picks out of a dictionary contains a piece

of that history. The renowned English poet W. H. Auden once said that

every one of his poems is a hymn of praise to the English language. A poet

in any language feels the same way about what we call the mother tongue.

Our mother tongue nourishes us. Just as the word “eald” meant centuries

ago.

Each morning my husband reads a page from his “Calendar of Forgotten

English,” a ritual that began 5 years ago when I gave him the 2000 calendar

for Christmas. These calendars collect words no longer in use, or not often,

and they lie on our table, waiting to be read while my husband drinks his

coffee. Words like “flaws” (gust of wind) and “blague” (humbug). Old

words. And, finally, not forgotten. Here they lie beside the cereal box, the

jam and butter, another morning’s invitation to look back and realize what

the word “old” really means. Still here. Ready for another year. Pick a word.

Any word. And it will carry you back to the roots of our language, and

forward into a present made even richer for knowing how the past spoke

itself.