Perhaps I wish for something dangerous—
a rush, a breakneck ride, a snow-drunk risk.
Instead, my daughter and I slide the toboggan
down the drive with a languid, slow-motion
sluggishness. And we laugh as we urge
the wooden sled forward, creeping
down the hill. After a few laps, the run
is fast enough we can build a small jump
at the bottom, but it’s more of a bump
than a launch. What is it in the heart
that loves a surge, a swell of excitement,
a dance with danger? Why is it fun
to be out of control when the stakes are low?
Oh, my girl and I know, we know what it’s like
when the stakes are high. No wonder
we laugh as we slide at the pace of a stroll.
We know what it’s like to be out of control.
We know. I hold her by the waist as we barely move.
And part of me longs for speed. And part of me
is grateful to move in a way that lets me hold her
a little bit, even just a few seconds, longer.
Posts Tagged ‘snow’
Tobogganing with My Teenage Daughter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, play, slow, snow, speed, time, winter on February 24, 2023| 7 Comments »
That Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged challenge, snow, storm, winter on February 21, 2023| 11 Comments »
It was like driving through a winter storm
for years, day after week after month
after night after morning of white-knuckled,
stiff-shouldered worry. No tracks to follow,
no sign of a centerline, no rails on the edge,
and where are the snowplows, and what
good is a map when you can’t read the signs?
There were whole months of white out, driving snow-blind
and slow, whole seasons of running the wipers on high
in an attempt to see just one inch further.
It was icy roads, skidding with the baby in back.
It was wishing I could ask someone else
to take the wheel. It was frozen-slick and slippery
with no studded snows. It was sliding with no brakes.
It was what I woke to everyday
and what I dreamed at night.
If there was beauty, I was too afraid to see it.
I wish I could tell you I was brave.
It was slow to change,
like a spring that arrives only to leave again.
One day the drifts were gone and the roads
were dry and the sky was wide blue and clear.
But it wasn’t like snow, was it?
Some things don’t just melt away.
Some storms transform the landscape forever.
Some storms transform the driver.
One Unmappable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, paradox, snow, stubborn praise on October 27, 2022| 6 Comments »
in the cemetery
new snow—
why does it bring me joy
to see it,
this thin foot path to you
After the First Snow Storm
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, belief, control, snow, understanding on October 24, 2022| 5 Comments »
Just when I believed
autumn would last forever
it didn’t.
Not that I really thought
the gold leaves would stay.
Not that I really believed
the warm days were endless—
but part of me wanted them to be.
And so this cold morning,
driving on ice
when I feel the slip of the wheels
as they lose traction,
the heart resonates
with the skid.
Oh, this lesson
in losing control.
Oh, this remembering
how quickly it all slides by—
the light, the warmth,
the deepening gold,
even this fleeting understanding
of how quickly
it all slides by.
Clean Slate
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, language, snow, weather on January 29, 2021| 2 Comments »
It’s almost always sunny just before
it snows—just before the sky turns grey
then meets the earth in giant swaths
of blue turned clouds turned snow turned drift,
and haven’t you sometimes wanted
to do that, too—to shift in an instant
from warm to cool, from blue to gray,
to know yourself as the opposite
of what you are, just as a day does,
an entirely new syntax unspooling
in swirling verbs and whirling predicates
so complex you forget who the subject is—
haven’t you wanted to flurry, to blizzard,
to white out until there were no tracks
like sentences left for you to follow?
One in the Woods
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aspen, shadow, snow, song, winter on January 3, 2021| 2 Comments »
Concurrent
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, nature, praise, snow, wound on December 12, 2020| Leave a Comment »
On a morning
when the snow
falls and drapes
everything in shine,
it is not that I don’t
feel the wounds—
raw and throbbing—
it’s just that it’s
so beautiful,
this tender world,
that I want
to praise it
forever.
The Snow People, Three Days Later
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged praise, snow, snowmen on November 30, 2020| 2 Comments »
Their hats are cockamamie.
One has lost its carrot nose.
Stone buttons and eyes
have long since succumbed
to gravity. But there is
something yet dignified
about the snow people in the yard,
their knobby stick arms raised
as if, in their declining state,
there’s still so much to praise.
Clear Instruction
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged memory, purity, snow, thirst, water on October 26, 2020| 2 Comments »
Tonight my daughter
closes her fist
around the first snow
squeezes to make it
into a small cold ball
the shape of her hand,
and then offers it to me.
It tastes like sky,
like electric charge,
like winter, like childhood,
like curiosity.
And once again
I’m a girl who walks
to the neighbor’s yard
for a drink at the well—
I pump the heavy lever
and it draws clean, clear water
from the ground.
There’s a red metal ladle
hanging from a nail
on a nearby tree,
and the water tastes of moss
and rust and freedom.
There is a thirst
that’s been bequeathed us—
a thirst for what is
untreated and pure,
a thirst I somehow
manage to forget.
If it could speak,
the thirst might say,
Remember, remember,
remember.
Second Chance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, play, snow on February 16, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Next time the boy
throws the snow
at my face,
please let me see
an invitation
to play,
though it’s cold,
surprising,
his eyes bright requests.