For the Love of Winter

My abundance is in winter.
I dwell in the peace of the silent snow,
sitting by the yellow light of a lamp
with a blanket and a book,
or comfortably close to him on the love seat.

I find joy in the lack of humidity and
the offensive noise of lawn mowers.
I feel happy covering my homely limbs
with sweaters and jeans instead
of sticky sunscreen and sweat,
and justified in drinking another hot tea.

There is beauty in the stark outline
of trees and squirrels against whiteness,
or watching my little dog sniff deer tracks
and race inside with a snowy nose.

To come out of the quiet cold
into a warmth of a home,
to hear the furnace kick on,
to snuggle up to a warmer body
under chilly bedsheets
is the abundance of winter.

It's Finally Spring in Cleveland!!

I just read a book by Mark Winegardner called "Crooked River Burning." It's a novel set in Cleveland and mentions every single Cleveland memory I have and every Cleveland event and celebrity from my childhood. Interesting. Here's a paragraph from the book that I could really relate to:

SUMMER NIGHTS! What is there to say about summer nights in Cleveland. This: Rock it, daddy-o! In Cleveland there is no spring. In Cleveland there is winter, then a wetter, meaner sort of winter (to be a Clevelander is to have a story about a ten-inch snowfall in April that you endured with good grace, a story you tell whenever the chance arises, to horrify Sun-belt pantywaists.) Then one day winter/wet-winter ends and, bingo-bango, it's summer time. After enduring what a person made of less-stern stuff than a Clevelander would confront in five winters, ten winters, maybe even a lifetime of winters, you've by god, earned your nine and one-half paradisiacal weeks of nighttime glory. You're Goldilocks baby, and you've spent some twenty-some weeks in the too-hard bed and twenty-some weeks in the too-soft, and you hit the sheets on Baby Bear's bed and you can't believe how heavenly it feels to feel just right. Just right!

But this an't no fairy tale, jack. Get your fairy tales the pantywaist hell out of Cleveland.

Random Photos

I have nothing to say so here are some random photos:

Today is sunny and the snow is almost gone here in northeast Ohio, but just 9 days ago I had my fifth snow day this year! This is Stella taking it all in. Barbeque anyone?

A few weeks ago the area was suspended in crystallized beauty as the ice clung to each tiny twig. The sunlight caused a surreal beauty we'd never seen before. It lasted for two days. Click on this one to enlarge and you'll see what I mean.

This is my sweet Stella on a lazy summer afternoon. Well, everyday is lazy for spoiled dogs.

More ice beauty.

December Lament

It's the funeral march towards the end of the year,
just a number, just a month, with joy to the world

and a slithering trail of regrets gaining on me
like a holiday rattlesnake about to strike, sending poison

to the veiny, icy backs of my hands. Visions relentlessly
knock at the frosted windowpane in my mind,

not of fairies and plums, but that first wet snowflake
on the windshield, that sudden chord of a song,

a broken ornament, children who are no longer children,
what the year was not, and someone who is not here.

Silent snow falls on my winter sorrows, until I look up
from my lament and see God in your eyes.

The Long Winter

Winter had lasted so long that is seemed it would never end. It seemed that they would never really wake up.
In the morning Laura got out of bed into the cold. She dressed downstairs by the fire that Pa had kindled before he went to the stable, They ate their course brown bread. Then all day long she and Ma and Mary ground wheat and twisted hay as fast as they could. The fire must not go out; it was very cold. They ate some course brown bread. Then Laura climbed into the cold bed and shivered until she grew warm enough to sleep.
Next morning she got out of bed into the cold. She dressed in the chilly kitchen by the fire. She ate her course brown bed. She took turns at grinding wheat and twisting hay. She did not ever feel awake. She felt beaten by the cold and storms. She knew she was dull and stupid but she could not wake up.

from The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder
(now doesn't that make you feel better?)

Winter

Slash of scarlet
bird in a mass of gray twigs
deer, like tree stumps blend
at rest on a cold cotton mattress
bough to toothpick painted
to the edge white to the tip
heavy laden and bowing to their Maker

a robin living on the piece of
startling green by the septic tank
picnic tables smothered and flying creatures
clutter and waltz at the feeders
sunless months our skin
as sallow as the sky
quiescent neighborhoods hibernate
in primitive search of warmth

on the silent journey
flakes continue like fairies lacking restraint
in a freefall to earth
circling down slower than gravity allows
and sometimes a tuft is released
from a branch carried by the cold
across our path in the unchanging
quarter pattern of the Ohio winter

Winter Wonderland

I love snow and always revel in it, but I honestly cannot remember a winter as beautiful as this one. For a week the snow never stopped. Over 25 inches accumulated here. But the amazing thing was that there was no wind, so every flake stayed right where it landed on its journey from heaven. Unusual creations were formed on every flat surface, and on every tiny twig of each tree and bush. I could not stop taking pictures of the beauty outside every window of my home and I wanted to share some with you - although photographs don't really give you the wonderment of seeing it all around you as it has here since New Year's Day 2010. In the last photograph - those two white bumps are our picnic tables! And in the first and third pictures there are chairs and a grill under those white blobs.