Howl

The wind was gusting over 30 mph when I pulled in to the driveway late yesterday afternoon. Drifted snow, blown off the fields to the west, covered the path to the porch, I had a full car to unload after a long weekend in New York and I was late for a conference call.

I tromped into the house through the snow, sneakers covered in white and leaving wet footprints on the kitchen floor. Earbuds in place and the conference call on mute, I put on my thick down jacket and Winnie-the-Pooh hat that wraps down around my cheeks and chin, pulled on windproof fleece mittens, and shoveled a path to the car as I listened to the meeting. Unloaded. Hurried out to the woodpile before it got dark to throw a day’s worth of wood into the barn because our stock got depleted last week. It was a night for a fire.

Later, dinner done, sitting by the fully throttled wood stove and catching up on email, I realized I’d yet to do my Grind small poem collage for the day. All I could think of was the wind, whipping away any heat the house managed to collect, especially in our bedroom, which faces north-west, directly into the battering gusts. I could feel the house shake and listened to the wind beast trying to break into the house, a constant roar accented with long howls

I sent off a quick, tiny poem to my Grinder group, then went upstairs to make a collage. It was just barely warm enough in my study to work. The images emerged, the words changed, and David and I gave up on the bedroom and slept in one of the beds at the back of the house, under double down comforters, as far from the wind as we could get.