MEASURING WINTER /f

  1. The looming white winter landscape—blurred by dream. The fog is still with us.

 

  1. Thirty-six hours of rain have washed away six inches of snow; now water dripping from the gutters that weren’t cleaned yet of fallen, pale brown autumn leaves. You worry about potential ice build-up in the Arctic days to come and jot down a reminder on the chartreuse post-it notes to text the family landscape guy, who has become an odd friend.

 

  1. The pines, colossal sentinels against the obscured sky, lack any discernible symmetry; their hawk, invisible, cawing into Tuesday.

 

  1. Buddha, in the blue light, motionless; still up to his chest in snow in what is left of the winter garden: truncated rose of Sharon and butterfly bushes that preened fuchsia, lavender, and dusty pink origamied petals just six weeks ago; the errant sweet pea at a standstill high up your privacy wall.

 

  1. Four pieces of mail: two bills, a credit card application that you won’t qualify for, and an advertisement for solar panels on the house you somehow afford; no Christmas cards yet.

 

  1. The white plastic bird bath [the ceramic salmon-colored one that cracked last year, finally thrown away] held down by a stone removed years ago from the sea you didn’t manage to visit the past two summers. Sigh.

 

  1. You find the tape measure in the broken drawer of the chest in the garage and measure the distance on the wall map to New Zealand’s White Island where yesterday a volcano erupted in a tourist location—6 confirmed dead, 8 missing and presumed dead, over 30 hurt. 17.5 wooden inches; 8,750 miles; according to a later Google search, 8,783. You’ll measure again tomorrow in morning’s light through the garage windows.

 

  1. Death causes you to remember the news anchorwoman who delivered the local news on Friday during supper like she did for 33 years and didn’t wake up on Saturday.

 

  1. The new fleece-lined slippers are still magical and warm; you’ve properly refrained from wearing them to walk the dog across the street to the empty lot where he likes to go after meals. A pat on the back in order, a hot chocolate with a heaping fist of baby marshmallows; tiny faces afloat in the froth.

 

  1. Side B begins [the day job over] on the couch under the picture window that frames the still-dense fog just as the towering streetlights flick on. No YouTube, just rain.

 

  1. Dinner can be fetched from the freezer [or maybe New England Clam Chowder from a can since there is milk in the house] and eaten at the counter like a horse; no one has to know you live this way—the floors without sweeping; the scattered rugs collecting particles you don’t usually notice; dust bunnies, and more dust; last month’s mail, too many notebooks to count though you’re tempted.

 

  1. Then the dream from the morning fills you again—lost inside the moon, a cocoon of milkweed-silk-sadness wrapped in light; looking for your father, the one who sent you there.
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5 Responses to MEASURING WINTER /f

  1. David says:

    Beautiful Krysia, David

  2. Yoshioka Owens says:

    As gorgeous and and simple and open and perfectly melancholic as anything I’ve read in a good while.

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