Book cover photo from Wikimedia Commons

The Empty Page

This time of year perhaps the empty page

Should be black instead of white

Bleak and wet and heavy with hibernation

Lie weighty and soggy on the silent desk

Waiting for some harbinger some hope

To leaven the wintry landscape within

Perhaps the page were better made of ice

That I may strap on the old hockey skates

Once more and finding that perfect stretch

Of cold weather without snow strike off

Across the perfect surface taking flight

Without a single word to shatter the ecstasy

© Bill Prindle, 2017

Remembering Winter

Winter, my old friend...

I see you beyond the hill

Autumn's last leaf swept away

My shoulders shake with chill

Are my bones just getting old?

They say you're on the way.

Even the clouds have lost their fluff

They seem so flat, so grey.

Yet, I recall a winter past

When cold couldn't halt my play

And the crunch of snow beneath my boots

Brought smiles to my day.

As snowballs landed at my feet

Thrown by admiring boys

Placing me on center stage

I can hear their swishing noise.

As days grow short and cold winds blow

I glance at the orange sun

Remembering so long ago

When winter just meant fun! 

© Shelly Sitzer, 2019

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Winter in Upstate NewYork, 1977

She tunnels out of her house 

through a mantel of snow

six feet high,

carrying her young son

to the barn.  She breaks

up a bunch of hay bales,

nesting him in the middle,

close to the cows.

She buries her head 

in the flank of the cow 

while she milks, thankful 

for its warm body and breath.

She’s swinging the pick-ax hard

through the ice in a trough

’til she chops a hole big enough

for a bucket to fill with water.

Running back and forth 

to water the cows, pigs,

horses, chickens.  The water

is fast-freezing in the bucket.

The temperature is windchill -40 degrees

for ten days.

Back home, she stokes the wood stove.

They sit within its three feet

of warmth, in their hats and coats.

All that’s left to burn is wet pine

and she burns it. 

Every cell in her body is an ice pellet.

The snow keeps falling.

By morning, the door won’t open.

If this was Antarctica, 

she would be better prepared,

mindful and in sync with her purpose.

Here, it’s all muscle-memory:  Survival.

Keep herself, her son, and the animals

from freezing to death.

There is a treacherous beauty

in the landscape, a silence

that only deep snow on farmland

seems capable of.

This span of time, of snow, wind and cold,

will just be another conversation with friends

in a few months.  But she

will remember it for years

and years as the time she overcame 

disbelief in herself.

© Evie Safran, 2017

"Old farm at Overtown in deep snow"
by Richard Johnson
from the Geography Project collection
from Wikimedia Commons