A Deep River Year
February 5, 2014

Sunday was Groundhog Day, and here it was overcast for a while before the sun broke out.   Traditionalists interpreted that to mean that winter will endure a while longer.  But I don’t need a groundhog to know that.   Winter hangs on in New England, with fits and starts, through February and March until some soft and unexpected day when the skunk cabbage push up through the mud and the peepers start their night song.   But we are a long way from that.

We awoke to another winter storm this morning—the second this week.    There is a certain resignation that seems to take over at this point.    The school district didn’t even decide to wait and see how this one might turn out.  They called off today’s school sessions yesterday while the sun was bright and warm.  And this morning the streets were completely quiet.   Not even the usual snowplows had begun the task of clearing the roads.

So my morning routine of walking the dogs at dawn became a surreal adventure into the mystery of winter.   Slogging through the deepening snow, we had to make our own path through an unbroken expanse of white, which seemed to be under, around, and over us all at once.    And then I became aware of the silence, and the fact that there was no wind at all.   This gift will not last.   But, for the moment, the stillness settled softly, like snow gathering on shoulders.

February, Stillness

The wind chimes hang still
Unmoved by the breaking light
Or the cascade of snow
Filling the earth.
Winter often prowls like a beast
Slinking through stones and bushes
And  lurking around forbidding corners,
Its breath icy with the otherness
Of sea and stars.
I walk north, feel the sting and bite,
Then finally turn my face homeward,
My back to the wind,
Pushed on by its force
Hard against my legs and heart.
But then a morning comes
Still and silent, breathless,
And wonder comes, and gratitude,
That for a while this winter morning
Is pregnant, waiting for something--
A different breath, perhaps--
To stir again,
Like a song.

--Timothy Haut, February 5, 2014