Winter Notes

WINTER NOTES

If winter were a book page,
what would you write
in the margins? I'd write
of bare limbs against
a frigid, pink horizon.
It would glow in a
straight line, nature's
cheerful offering,
a rosy hem offering up
color and jounce to the
ashen, bewildered trees.

I'd jot down gentle words
like freshly fallen snow,
describing the sound
of a wandering cardinal,
how the breath in its throat
smells of earth and branches.
I'd notice the brittle ivy
twining our oak tree,
how my own frozen breath
hovers over it like
a vapor ghost.

I'd write of January's
twilight, how it snaps
its necklace, scattering
its strung stars across
the sky like loose pearls
in a black, velvet box.
The stars would shiver and
dance to keep warm, and
I'd take notes while
yearning for the scents
of summer: moths and sweat,
bees and clover.

© Sherri Brannon 2014

When the long, freezing days of January through March start dragging by, I always find myself writing poems about winter...and my strong yearning for spring. Never fails! I enjoy cold weather during the month of December - somehow it's more festive and bearable during the holidays. But once New Year's passes, I'm ready for the cold days to be over.

This week I have cabin fever - we got snow on Tuesday, followed by several days of subzero windchills. It was even more of a shock to the system because we had just gotten back from Florida and I still had fresh memories of sunshine and palm trees. These brutally low temperatures we're having are not the norm for Virginia. April, where are you?

I had fun playing with my winter tree image in Photoshop - I created the "pink horizon" for the purpose of my poem. I used the gradient effect to achieve that appearance, and I also put my image into Radlab and tweaked it further with filters.

How the gravity of Nature and the silence startle you, when you stand face to face with her, undistracted, before a barren ridge or in the desolation of ancient hills. ~Guy Sargent