Model for Winter

window to the barn...

yours truly...
and a cool shot of the barn light during the snow...

I have to say that I haven't been enjoying winter all that much for the past few years.  Apparently winter isn't as much fun when adulthood sets in.  While as a kid snow used to mean forts, street hockey, snow days, etc; snow now means snowblowing, driving to work when others have snow days and more snowblowing...and yes getting stuck here and there occasionally.  No one prepares you for this that's for sure.  

I wasn't sure what to expect out of winter at the new house.  Sure it's only 6 minutes from our old house but it is decidedly more country for sure.  Throw in learning how to take care of 2 horses in sub-freezing temps and I thought it would be a nightmare.  Well, no one prepared me for this either.  I am loving winter out here!  It is incredibly cozy with the snow falling so quietly and all the animals content and cozy.  

Not sure if it is this storm either but there has been no wind.  At the Girard house the wind would blow you down like a freight train.  An hour after snowblowing the drive the wind would blow drifts over the drive and it looked like planet Hoth in no time.  It was scary.  Here, so far, there is no wind.  Perhaps it is the woods surrounding the house and the manner in which the property is laid out.  Either way it's great.  

We love it here!

Let it snow!

I wrote this in 2002...it is quite appropriate for the snow that has quietly been falling for the past week with temps hanging out in the single digits.

#88 model for winter

this storm has no memory,

it goes on without purpose,

as though it forgot why it started in the first place.

it is total.

“it was evening all afternoon,”

for a whole week straight.

this is the second half of another poem that i wrote a long time ago, also very appropriate:  it's named quiet enough to hear.

...the snow, again fell so effortlessly.

at that moment everything was paused, frozen in more ways than one, yes, paused.

snowfall brings with it silence, a silence like no other.

nothing moves at times like this.

summer nights have a rhythm to them,

winter nights are a deep breath in no hurry to exhale.

the jets overhead arc out of earshot and silence returns.

quietly the world sleeps as nature wills itself on,

all the while i stand quietly so as not to disturb.

i remember winter nights like this when i was a kid,

outside building snow forts with dad and todd, mom inside with warmth, waiting.

the ubiquity and beauty of snow is as always,

quiet enough to hear.

  for the listener, who listens in the snow,

and, nothing himself, beholds

nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

-an excerpt from the snowman by wallace stevens