Enter Winter \ Walking In

Nancy: Suddenly, if not surprisingly, it arrives,  like the parade that you know is just up the road.  Some drama, some beauty, exciting until it wears out its welcome and we begin to count the minutes of returning light.

Enter Winter

with a sun turning, saying no

no, I’ll never leave you, tiptoeing

back up the hill

with a moon hanging sweet, yellow

as a plum in bare branches

with a tide flooding its sprills

and riffles through the poplar grove

with a proclamation: here

a small bird

black and white, is singing

a song of himself, here

in the scarlet brambles

Alan: For 12 years our road was impassible in winter.  From mid-December sometimes until the end of April, we’d walk, snowshoe, ski – whatever it took – dragging our groceries or clean laundry behind us on a sled.  No lights, no sound of traffic, just the land and water and the prayer of a small house at the end.

Walking In

Snow in our faces,

foghorn in our ears,

you a stiff child-shape

against the blank where the bay must be.

Fenceline, crazy leaners,

this is a long way in

for the bloodhounds of the snow.

The packed edge sliding away underfoot.

A tuft, here and there, dried spoor of autumn.

A rise, a slowing,

drift of spent wood smoke

from that hole in the sky

that must be home.