Thursday, January 28, 2010

The Silent, Silent Snow

Dead calm and quiet takes the breath. The chill tingles when I swallow the humid ice filled air at first. I warm it with my 98.6 degree temperature. I skate and cut the cold with my warm pink coat and long peach scarf that hangs to my knees.

I spend hours dancing on the ice with my skates, and all by myself. I know my mom is watching me from the kitchen window with a cigarette held up to her mouth. Her elbow is supported by her hand. I am sure she watches me with trepidation. She can't help but remember the time the ice broke away behind her as she and my uncle sped across the lake on a snowmobile.

I dance without my mom's fears. I dance like a rag doll with invisible strings attached that pull me across the midnight blue ice. I dance with a song in my head, or maybe I sing out and the air takes my song through headphones and only the silence hears.

The silent world holds the secrets. The silent world keeps them.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

A New Year Full of Resolution


When the lake finally freezes over and the vast expanse is covered with snow, and before anything settles there, there is a great chill that rushes the shore. A white blank slate stretches shore to shore, a canvas, my canvas.


I painted memories of a small girl growing in age, but hardly height, making snowmen with her mother and cousins; or, of her cousin and friend snowmobiling right through them. The little girl cried to see her creation destroyed.


When the little girl looked from the window to the lake below she saw one midnight blue square on the whole white lake world. It was there that she could paint the sky with her skates, etch the stars with her blade.


Soon the midnight and the white would lease its land to the fisherman and the snowmobiles. Cities, however temporary, would change address to the lake while the lion still roared out a winter.


In the New Year the world still sleeps, and under the lake the fish are far away.

White snow singing

My breath is sweet with snowflakes

Happy is my tongue


And while the world sleeps through the waking hour it dreams of the potential spring. I see potential in the winter too, she is the little girl who creates with all the colors of the world a peaceful snow angel full of light.


Happy New Year!