Winter Words

I like words. 

I like the way they fit together; the visual picture they create, the sounds they make, the sensations they elicit.

The other night Rob read me the short story, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.  He had found an old 1940's anthology of short stories that belonged to my mom in one of our many bookcases and despite my protestations about reading that particular story, he continued.  I thought the movies that have made from the short story have been incredibly stupid. But it was so engaging and enjoyable, so much better than any of the movies.   I encourage everyone to read those three very short pages. 

A Mind of Winter is a small book of selected poems for a snowy season.  Seems appropriate this year.

I love the introduction by Donald Hall:

"Winter is always again.  From the fire of October, so garish it would be vulgar if it were design, the year extends through diminishing sun into the grays and browns of an analytic cubist landscape.  One day the matted leaves take on a white, gradual thickening.  Snow decorates the tops of boulders and the flat extent of hay fields.  It reverses the twilight shades of November into multiple curves of white, against which deciduous trunks raise their bare verticals, and continuous coniferous green takes on more green."

"The best part of winter is snow falling.  Sky grays over, formidable in its warnings, and clouds blacken, until the first flutter falls.  Flakes gather density until the frigid air is a white fabric of descent.  Descent is the music of snow, proceeding to its coda, flat over garden and road and hay field."

"The best part of winter is imagining spring.  Walking in the whiteness that feathers to our boot tops, we dream awake that the days of April already warm us.  We look through the surface of the humped white garden to watch daffodils rise, and peonies patalled the color of snow."

"Winter is our bear -sleep of commodious shelter.  Winter is the year's pause."

"At winter's stuttering end, in March, midnight freezes and noon is tropical, maple trees grow tin pails, and from sugar houses smoke rises day and night.  Winter springs into sweetness."

Only in the north can one, not only imagine, but see that maple trees really do grow tin pails!  So much fun!