Ushering In Winter With The Wood Between

We're in the deep freeze right now. It came fast with daytime temperatures in the 60's one day and then dropping into the 30's over the next two days. Night time temps are in the teens. To cap it all off snow is predicted for Saturday.

Now, I like winter, but it does take some time for me to adjust to the change and anticipate the pleasures of the season. I hope to keep fishing on the good days when they come, and I plan to get out to enjoy the particular beauty of the winter landscape. But I'm not ready yet.

A pleasant boost in this adjustment phase has come from some recent winter-themed posts on The Wood Between. I look at these works of art and suddenly I can hardly wait for winter.

Chris Wormell

Yuri Vasnetsov

William Hyde

"Instructions On Not Giving Up" by Ada Limon

"Backwater" by Alexander Grishkevich, 2001

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out

of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s

almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving

their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate

sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees

that really gets to me. When all the shock of white

and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave

the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,

the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin

growing over whatever winter did to us, a return

to the strange idea of continuous living despite

the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,

I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf

unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

"Ode to the Fish" by Ellen Bass

Daniel Danger

Nights when I can’t sleep, I listen to the sea lions

barking from the rocks off the lighthouse.

I look out the black window into the black night

and think about fish stirring the oceans.

Muscular tuna, their lunge and thrash

churning the water, whipping up a squall,

storm of hunger. Herring cruising,

river of silver in the sea, wide as a lit city.

And all the small breaths: pulse

of frilled jellyfish, thrust of squid,

frenzy of krill, transparent skin glowing

green with the glass shells of diatoms.

Billions swarming up the water column each night,

gliding down at dawn. They’re the greased motor

that powers the world. Shipping heat

to the arctic, hauling cold to the tropics,

currents unspooling around the globe.

My room is so still, the bureau lifeless,

and on it, inert, the paraphernalia of humans:

keys, coins, shells that once rocked in the tides—

opalescent abalone, pearl earrings.

Only the clock’s sea-green numerals

register small changes. And shadows

the moon casts—fan of maple branches—

tick across the room. But beyond the cliffs

a blue whale sounds and surfaces, cosmic

ladle scooping the icy depths. An artery so wide,

I could swim through into its thousand-pound heart.

"Ode to the Fish" by Ellen Bass from Like a Beggar. © Copper Canyon Press, 2014.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Brian Edward Miller

When I was a child

I once sat sobbing on the floor

Beside my mother’s piano

As she played and sang

For there was in her singing

A shy yet solemn glory

My smallness could not hold

And when I was asked

Why I was crying

I had no words for it

I only shook my head

And went on crying

Why is it that music

At its most beautiful

Opens a wound in us

An ache a desolation

Deep as a homesickness

For some far-off

And half-forgotten country

I’ve never understood

Why this is so

But there’s an ancient legend

From the other side of the world

That gives away the secret

Of this mysterious sorrow

For centuries on centuries

We have been wandering

But we were made for Paradise

As deer for the forest

And when music comes to us

With its heavenly beauty

It brings us desolation

For when we hear it

We half remember

That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields

Their fragrant windswept clover

The birdsongs in the orchards

The wild white violets in the moss

By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it

Is the longed-for beauty

Of the One who waits for us

Who will always wait for us

In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us

And wanders where we wander.

"Music" by Anne Porter, from Living Things. © Zoland Books, 2006.

Winter Solstice

"Mountain Winter" by Sabra Field

HAPPY SOLSTICE!

Welcome the return of the light.