Weather Sampler

Fascinating weather on the drive home from Thanksgiving at my daughter's in central NY.  I got a sampler of snow, sunshine, hail, wild wind, majestic clouds in shades from white to black ... and upon my arrival home, a gorgeous moon with a rainbow ring around it. I stopped along the way to take this photo of the ice on my windshield.

Click on image to enlarge.  Photo taken Saturday, 11/24/12.

Skeletal Ice

The Soul should stand in Awe --
-- Emily Dickinson

Delicate claws, skeletons, spiderwebs, daggers and ripples of ice. I suffered a wet sock and shoe getting this picture -- twice -- but it was worth it. This was the most beautiful, intricate ice I have ever seen, a gift formed by the crazy weather at the end of February. Now we are on the cusp of spring; even the last gritty rinds of snow have been washed away by the rain. The world is dripping, thawing. Things are about to happen.

The photo was taken 2/26/11. Click on image to enlarge.

Magic Skylight

I say one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet makes himself a seer by an immense, long, deliberate derangement of all the senses.

-- Arthur Rimbaud, Letter to Paul Demeny [May 15, 1871]

This is my magic skylight, sharing its own odd perspective on the world through its frame of thawing ice. When you look up through it, it toys with your orientation in space. I like that dizzy sensation, the momentary vision of the world as a new and thrilling place. In one of its earlier incarnations, fully covered with layers of ice, the skylight allowed enough light through to become a three-dimensional Mark Rothko painting. This morning its frame has melted and cracked, leaving the naked trees looming like crackled varnish, patterns backlit by February sun. I praise its kaleidoscope eye.

The photograph was taken 2/6/11.

Thawing Mirror

The pond begins to pull back its curtains of snow and ice, revealing layers of mystery. It holds the sky and still-naked branches in its thawing mirror. With narrow fingers, the upside-down trees reach for last fall's leaves.

This afternoon I walked up to the pond in search of returning wood frogs, but all was silent. Soon, soon.

The photo was taken 3/10/10 at the pond at the top of my hill. Click on image to enlarge.

Windshield Feathers

This so-called "arctic blast" has us hibernating. On soul-chilling Saturdays like this, I welcome the morning mug of coffee with both hands. This has been another season of spectacular ice formations -- fantastic, fleeting patterns only the camera can hold on to. These swirling ice-plumes surprised me on December 14th, as I hurried to my car on the way to work. I had never seen such an intricate windshield bas relief. I found my camera and took this photo from the driver's seat. I love the way the bare black trees loom like giants beyond the glass. Hard to stop looking; harder yet to scrape away the art and head toward my other reality.

To enlarge the photo, click on the image.

Disobey the Current

Drawn by the curled wave of snow and ice against black water, I stood as close as I dared, not knowing where the ground ended and the stream began beneath the snow.

Thoughts jotted down while revisiting the image this silent Sunday morning:

Thinking of all the forces that rush past – unstoppable -- that freeze and melt our edges, that swirl our thoughts into beauty and darkness, that form patterns of poetic clarity, that ripple cold and warm past the heart, as boundaries thaw then re-form, then give way again, as -- quivering -- we inhabit shape after shape. Yet, how still and immutable, how solid: that place at our core that disobeys the current.

The photo was taken 1/9/10. Click on image to enlarge.

Ice Thorn

Late this afternoon, at the top of my hill: an ice thorn encasing the last of the light.

Arrival

Just now, walking up past the pond at dusk, we heard the wood frogs calling. We followed the chorus in. Silence. Then, here and there, the song began again. Overnight, the last of the ice melted, and the frogs are mating. Tomorrow: spring.

The photograph of fungi was taken up at the pond. Click on image to enlarge.

Cloud Between Two Worlds

Yesterday there was still ice on the pond up the hill, floating like a cloud between two worlds, like a veil between the shifting seasons. Not a wood frog to be found. Only the silent guardian rock, beached like a sailboat at the edge.

Click on image to enlarge.

Ice Lace

The melting ice reshapes itself into lacy galaxies, volcanic peninsulas, and bubbled glass swirls.

The ice was found on the road at the top of my hill. Click on image to enlarge.

Thaw

So much glittering ice this winter. The stairs, the brick walk, and the steep driveway are all treacherous runways leading to slapstick crash landings. Especially in the dark. Today: thaw at last. Just saying February sounds warmer. (Parallel mood thaw?)

Here are several selected lines plucked (not in order, sorry -- just wanted that first one first) from Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska's poem "Under a Certain Little Star," translated by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire:

Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing now and again.

Let happiness be not angry that I take it as my own.

I apologize to time for the muchness of the world / overlooked per second.

I apologize to the cut-down trees for the table's four legs.

I apologize to the big questions for small answers.

This piece appeared in The Poetry of Our World: An International Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, edited by Jeffery Paine with Kwame Anthony Appiah, Sven Birkerts, Joseph Brodsky, Carolyn Forche, and Helen Vendley. (Harper Collins Publishers, 2000)

The photos were taken yesterday, right here inside my own personal ice. Thanks to Thea for the miniature creatures. They make me laugh.

Possibilities inside Cold Truths

Yesterday, Inauguration Day: possibilities inside cold truths. Still a long, hard season ahead, but hopes stirred for the sleeping twig encased in ice, hopes for a thaw, a future touch of citrus green.

As I listened to Obama's speech, I copied down this single line: "We are willing to extend our hand if you are willing to unclench your fist ..."

Photo taken in my yard, January 2009. Click on image to enlarge.

More Icy Patterns

I loved the icicles that grew like glass fingers from the red Adirondack footstool during the recent ice storm.

Cable Knit Snow

At the top of my hill, I came across this cable knit snow in the road, formed of tire tracks. Sometimes individual patterns coincidentally come together to form something more beautiful and whole. The obvious parallel: poetry. The gorgeous surprise of lines and words entwined to make a poem.

In Around Us the Darkness is Deep, in the poem entitled "How These Words Happened," William Stafford writes this first stanza:

In winter, in the dark hours, when others
were asleep, I found these words and put them
together by their appetites and respect for
each other. In stillness, they jostled. They traded
meanings while pretending to have only one.
__________

"In stillness, they jostled." I like that. Knit together, the lines grow richer and wider, the poem invites us into its deeper pattern.

An Icy Eye

Today's endless ice and rain formed fantastic ice sculptures everywhere. These miniature icicles grew from the handle and edges of the barbeque.

Here's an excerpt from "Winter in a Glass Eye," an icy prose poem in Stirring the Mirror, my 2007 collection from Bitter Oleander Press:

Missing the missing casts absence into a blown glass shell, an icy eye encompassing emptiness. A fracture of the heart weeps this brittle treasure. Some pain is so hard won, it forms a glittering accretion. The heart clings to its frozen jewel, shields memory in its tight fist. It holds on, so not to lose the past joy that left this cold pebble in its palm....

I'm missing my friend Jill Wood, who passed away in the early hours of December 26th. She was brilliant, artistic, creative, feisty, honest, funny, and strong -- a woman warrior. She fought for those she loved, she fought for what she believed in, she fought to the very end.

Click on image to enlarge.