I love snow and it’s mostly because it fills me with hope for a full-on nobody-goes-anywhere Snow Day
You can keep the iffy days when the forecast is scary but the morning sky’s a little slow on the uptake and I get dressed, one eye on the sky, and finally make it out the door still looking up. Soon as I get to work, everything changes and by three o’clock I’m stuck at Union Station still looking up, and there’s no line at Uncle Tetsu’s Cheesecake. Like yesterday. And fuck off spellcheck
But this morning it’s beautiful. All swirly with the kind of peace and quiet unique to snowy mornings. I guess the guy across the street wasn’t entirely ridiculous when, in spite of my heckling, he put his Christmas lights up Saturday when it was still single-digit November. He keeps them on all night and there’s a nice little fuzzy line of white over there now and not much else. It’s 5:45am and I can barely distinguish the half-snow, half-cedar whirlpool out back, the fronds all lacy and swoopy, and yes, spellcheck, I’m a swan.
I was on the fence about raking, because of the bees mostly, and there’s still a pair of grizzly old pumpkins on my porch that look like Anjelica Houson and Steve Buchemi having a laugh.
Maybe I’ll wait and see if they still think it’s funny in a couple of weeks
I don’t want to get all Julie Andrews on you – I am actually more of a Winter of Our Discontent kind of girl than the kind who loves snowflakes on her nose and eyelashes – but winter really is one of my favourite things and I think it’s because there’s more depth to things, and I don’t expect you to know what I mean, because I’m not sure I even know what I mean, but I’ll try to explain and you try to pretend you care. I am not a poet and I usually don’t have time for it, but the winter makes me want to read poetry. I can see more deeply into things. Maybe because I don’t feel like I have to go hop on a paddleboard or ride my bike to the lake for a swim or keep the plants alive or go see what Minden’s up to or worry about how Lake Superior is getting on without me.
So I pay more real attention to whatever it is that’s swirling around in my head and I write more, and better, and deeper. When it’s kind of dark and there’s a candle next to me or when there’s a fire going and there’s soup or maybe a glass of port, I may look just like your grandma, but I’m a warrior on the page
I read this a very long time ago and I blew it up on a photocopier and kept it in my purse for maybe six months like forty years ago and it got all torn and worn and soft like fabric and I put it as-was in a frame and it sits on a shelf most of the time, but every first snowfall I go get it and prop it up somewhere and read it a million times. Anne Sexton wrote it and even if you don’t read poetry, you can read Anne Sexton.
