Winter!

      Snow fell lightly at my house this past week. I'll be skiing in the mountains this Saturday! Hurrah, it's winter!

      Not everyone is as excited as I. My new neighbor, who recently bought the only other house on the road, is leaving for the winter, the ice and uneven frozen ground being more of a challenge to his recently broken leg than he had anticipated.  It won't be the first time I've spent a winter up here on the mountain alone.

      I've been on this mountain for almost half a century, and I wouldn't dream of leaving for the winter. I love the winters. Maybe, maybe, if we're lucky (as I see it), we'll have a good, cold, snowy winter this year.

      Hints of winter, in fact, inspire me to poetry: 

First Rain (Sept. 20)

At last
a smattering of rain
Not the clatter and chatter of rain in March
Not the stormy bluster of December
or the soldierly muster of later months
Just the pitter-patter of a callow beginner
The first-step quiver of rain trying it out
A splitter-of-seasons rain
A gentler of dried-up tempers
Timid tremors of inchoate storms
Reminders of showers
downpours and gully washers
A shiver of excitement
A glimmer of hope
that winter
is icumen in



First Snow (Dec. 1)

The season's first snow
falls like tiniest down from angel wings
or a fairy-fall of droplets
after a cosmic bath in the clouds
that swaddle Humpy Mountain.
The outdoor scene is a silent movie
after the drumming rain
(before talkies
before Technicolor).
Live oaks and evergreens
lift snow-lace limbs.
The fire is warm on the hearth.
The tea steeps.
Curled in my lair
I watch snow float
past the window
gentling the earth
into winter.