Robert Dunbar's Blog - Posts Tagged "snow"
WINTER GARDEN
I am a book of snow,
a spacious hand, an open meadow,
a circle that waits,
I belong to the earth and its winter.
~ Pablo Neruda, Winter Garden
Plenty of firewood, but we’re almost out of kindling. I’m so not going out to gather any: the temperature is single digit. (We’re talking Fahrenheit here.) And that wind could take your flesh off. (I wonder if the husband will notice if a chair suddenly goes missing.) It’s the kind of day that makes you conscious of the sheer luxury of being indoors.
A couple of deer are huddled just outside. They see me in the window… and don’t care. (Did you know deer like ginger snaps?) I may need another cup of tea. Perhaps a blanket. And a stack of books.
Above all things a stack of books.
“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and dead.”
~ James Joyce, The Dead
“It snowed all week. Wheels and footsteps moved soundlessly on the street, as if the business of living continued secretly behind a pale but impenetrable curtain. In the falling quiet there was no sky or earth, only snow lifting in the wind, frosting the window glass, chilling the rooms, deadening and hushing the city. At all hours it was necessary to keep a lamp lighted…”
~ Truman Capote, Miriam
Is it ever going to stop? The yard already resembles some alien landscape…
“And the mist of snow, as he had foreseen, was still on it – a ghost of snow falling in the bright sunlight, softly and steadily floating and turning and pausing, soundlessly meeting the snow that covered, as with a transparent mirage, the bare bright cobbles. He loved it – he stood still and loved it. Its beauty was paralyzing – beyond all words, all experience, all dream. No fairy-story he had ever read could be compared with it – none had ever given him this extraordinary combination of ethereal loveliness with a something else, unnameable, which was just faintly and deliciously terrifying.”
~ Conrad Aiken, Silent Snow, Secret Snow
a spacious hand, an open meadow,
a circle that waits,
I belong to the earth and its winter.
~ Pablo Neruda, Winter Garden
Plenty of firewood, but we’re almost out of kindling. I’m so not going out to gather any: the temperature is single digit. (We’re talking Fahrenheit here.) And that wind could take your flesh off. (I wonder if the husband will notice if a chair suddenly goes missing.) It’s the kind of day that makes you conscious of the sheer luxury of being indoors.
A couple of deer are huddled just outside. They see me in the window… and don’t care. (Did you know deer like ginger snaps?) I may need another cup of tea. Perhaps a blanket. And a stack of books.
Above all things a stack of books.
“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and dead.”
~ James Joyce, The Dead
“It snowed all week. Wheels and footsteps moved soundlessly on the street, as if the business of living continued secretly behind a pale but impenetrable curtain. In the falling quiet there was no sky or earth, only snow lifting in the wind, frosting the window glass, chilling the rooms, deadening and hushing the city. At all hours it was necessary to keep a lamp lighted…”
~ Truman Capote, Miriam
Is it ever going to stop? The yard already resembles some alien landscape…
“And the mist of snow, as he had foreseen, was still on it – a ghost of snow falling in the bright sunlight, softly and steadily floating and turning and pausing, soundlessly meeting the snow that covered, as with a transparent mirage, the bare bright cobbles. He loved it – he stood still and loved it. Its beauty was paralyzing – beyond all words, all experience, all dream. No fairy-story he had ever read could be compared with it – none had ever given him this extraordinary combination of ethereal loveliness with a something else, unnameable, which was just faintly and deliciously terrifying.”
~ Conrad Aiken, Silent Snow, Secret Snow
