Category: Weather

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NaHaiWriMo

NaHaiWriMo – National Haiku Writers Month — the shortest month of the year, for the shortest form of poetry. I learned this from A Woodland Rose, who is writing a haiku every day in February.  A Woodland Rose and I connected through my Twin Sistah (no, I don’t have a twin, this is a friend and colleague who shares the same birthday as me and who has such an enthusiastic embrace of life and the path of feminist justice that she calls her colleagues in the movement to end violence against women, the movement for greater peace and centered awareness in the world, “sistahs!”, thus we are Twin Sistahs) who directed A Woodland Rose to my blog.  So we’re BloHaiSis’s, or Blogging Haiku Sistahs.  Today’s NaHaiWriMo entry:

Early grey softens
Ice cushioning running feet
Spinning globe turns south.

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Haiku L

So, I’ve been writing the Roman Numerials of my haikus wrong since 40.  40 is XL, as in 10 less than 50, which is L.  Here’s Number 50.

Paw prints on the trail
Tracks on tracks crossing fresh snow
A wing left to show.

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Storm Skiing

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Two storms in two days, and in preparation for the second storm and the predicted dump of another foot of snow, the state more or less shut down.  David and I decided early to get out into the storm for a ski, then come home to get our work for the day done.  The snow was falling thick as we set out on the trail to the west of the house, blowing into us across the open fields, making the world a hazy grey.  It was hard to get any sense of depth or direction as snow swirled around us.  Our skis were lost under the deep snow.  Our hats and neck warmers crusted as snow melted from our body heat, then froze again.  

Once the trail headed into the woods, the black of wet pine trunks and the green needles showing dark against their loads of snow provided contrast that gave the world around us depth.  The snowmobile trail had been tracked through the woods, probably last night after the first storm, and our skis started to appear again out from under the snow.  The trail took us across several roads, up the power lines, then up over a ridge draped with hemlocks and tall white and red pines.  We crossed the stream pouring out of Durgin Pond, rocks capped with great domes of white against the black water. 

The storm was cold and glorious and windy and wild and we skied right through it.  Lovely.  We came home and were able to catch our neighbor before he finished plowing, moving our cars out of the way so he could pile up the snow from the whole driveway.  Facing the five foot wall of snow between the driveway and the house, all that was left was figuring out how to get to the door.

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Monday Morning

It’s -12 degrees.  The dawn is washing gray over the black and white, snow and ice world.  I’m getting ready to go to work, not carrying my grandson around while I make my morning coffee, then cradling him in my bent-knee lap so he can move his head and arms and legs around, whirling the world into view, into his mind, into his churn of newness and marvel and plain figuring-it-all-out.  Like most babies, he moves his head to look at light and lifts his face to let the morning through the window fill his eyes.  I look out the window most mornings myself, I get up and raise the shades and see what’s what.  Today I see frigid air and snow still clumped on the miniature blue spruce.  It’s too cold to make the long walk out to the paper tube, long because the path across the front yard isn’t shoveled and getting to the paper means walking out the driveway, across the road in front of the house, down the road to the side of the house.  There’s a five foot wall of plowed snow between the house and the newspaper.  I’ll get the news soon enough today.  I’m going to work, and there’s no baby in my lap.

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Haiku XXXXV

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Snow again last night
House full of morning sunshine
Dig out dig under.