Dear Hearts,
I sat down, intending to write something instructional— to myself, mostly, but to anyone who needs to hear a story about the last push of winter. It snowed on my hill yesterday and the day before. It didn’t stick, but still! Anyway, what I ended up writing feels more like a prosy-poem, so I’ll leave it here followed by a list of some good poems for the dregs of winter.
THANK YOU for the overwhelming (truly!!!) support of my project to post yoga, meditation, and writing practices here. I’m already working on my next post for March. <3
Winter Blues
I awaken in my dreams; that is, in my dream I know I am dreaming and wonder what time it is, yet do not want to open my eyes. My eyelids lift, the right one lagging behind the left, and the skin above and below smarts a little, as if the movements of my eye during the prolonged rapid eye movement cycle of sleep had been prolonged beyond the capacity of its namesake. An eye sore from dreaming is a wing strained from flying.
The light seeping in around the corners and edges of the blackout shades is closer to white than gray. It must be almost seven.
A little while later, I sit cross-legged in very baggy sweatpants and an inside-out sweater on the rug in my studio, looking east. The sun has only just surpassed the mountain, though they’re hiding behind layers of clouds that glide on a plane that is perpendicular to the sun’s apparent path across the sky, though I know it us us who spin.
The erratic wind lifts, then drops the wispy twigs— more like bronchioles, so facile their movements are— of a tree that is higher than and a block’s distance east from me. The conifer trees that are closer to my window pulse and sway. Birds flap and soar. The sun burns a hole in the nearest cloud that is quickly filled in by another. White, gray, gray-gold, a hint of blue sneaks by low in the sky.
Winter challenges me to feel the things I do not want to feel.
I want to feel creative and productive, and in this light I feel the opposite, even as I type this. Even as I mix paint and swirl it on a canvas. Winter, and more precisely deep winter, old winter, the last lap of winter, makes me want to lie under a pile of blankets and emerge once the ground’s thaw has sent steam into the sky.
But a pair of yellow finches, though I’m not sure I’m bold enough to name them Gold swim up from below to bounce on the cedar tendrils at my eye-level. I’m typing, I’m typing. I’m painting, I’m painting. I’m awake, and my eyes are open-open to Gold and green and the red of the spiky leaves and the orange of the VW bus, and they must be open to the gray and the white too. And its into the frozen water and wind for me, and I’m laughing again for I can feel the pink in my cheeks and the blue of my wide open windows.
Good Poems about Late Winter:
“February,” by Margaret Atwood
“Under the Edge of February,” by Jane Cortez
“The House in Winter,” by May Sarton is probably my favorite winter poem, but I can’t find a digital version that is freely available so I’ll share a photo here. If you can find a copy of The Selected Poems of May Sarton, published in 1978, oh my do I recommend it.
(I cut myself on a deceptively sharp cheese-knife this week and that wound is barely-visible here.)
Recommending:
The International Rescue Fund: I’ve been supporting this organization for years, and they truly go where the need is greatest. Their efforts in Gaza, Sudan, and Congo are essential right now.
I’ve added to my traveling playlist. I think it strikes the perfect balance of nostalgia for comfort while moving around.
Love to All+++
Kelly
It is such a joy to hear from you regularly again, friend! I absolutely loved the practice from a couple weeks ago. Such a gift to practice with you, always! <3