Winter in Coats

With every seasonal change we can’t help notice how the light is altered by earthly effects, one reflecting the other. While summer reflects the most light, in winter it reflects the least. Atmospheric phenomena like Halos and Sundogs usually occur in the winter when light is refracted off ice crystals close to the earth’s surface;  it’s called diamond dust. Snow shadows and ghostly curvatures often conjure unimaginable creatures, and memories that can emerge in the lines of a poem.  Emerson’s poem “The Snow Storm” exemplifies the shadowy appearances snow creates…

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,

And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet

Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of storm.”

 

Winter in Coats

Its whorled trunk hobbled

In the distance, erupting like

A tufted winter coat, arms

Cross bones vibrating in flight.

Flailing axed, freshly sawed

Crimped closer than breath,

Trunk no shape, limbs shuffling

The shapeless coat into the wind.

 

 

 

 

 

Ensconced in white snow wood,

Squandered sap stitched icicles

Entwined, just visible through the

Frosted windows of motioning trains.

 

Victoria Price