FORLORNE 'SOLDIERS' NO MORE

Up until just two days ago, I feared that the following poem I wrote last January would be true of this year as well.

 

Absorbed

The ground is bare

and brown.

Dried and broken,

nearly beyond recognition,

leaves scatter themselves

in the breeze,

and as I walk back to my cabin,

my feet cannot avoid the plethora

of pinecones

littered in my path.

I do not mind,

rather enjoy 

the music of the

crunch, crunch, crunch.

Still, I ache for snow

on this January day,

when at 44 degrees

it seems more like spring.

My skis,

forlorn upright soldiers

lean against the too

warm bricks

of the basement wall

dejectedly,

longing as I do

for the shush, shush, shush

of winters past...

longing for the woods,

for the densely white silence

that opens up

and takes us deeply in

until we disperse

our cellular structure

and are no more.

January 2012

Now it might happen that this is the only snowfall we will get, or one of only a few, however

as I am just back from my first ski of the season...

still feeling the thrill of the magic and beauty that surrounded me

I am nothing but grateful...

grateful for the silence, the solitude, the majesty of winter.  And however foolish it might sound, I do think of my skis propped against the basement bricks....waiting...waiting...waiting...and I think now that they are grateful, too.