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