Winter Clothes

Winter forces me to think about clothes. This year, with more time on my hands and more adults in my social circle than ever before, I have been more conscious of how I dress, and I've gotten more comfortable putting outfits together rather than just throwing on a t-shirt.

I discovered, this season, that I love wool: wool socks that cushion my feet from the cold tile floor; the red wool coat that is almost as warm now as it was when I got it 9 years ago; the wool hat with ear flaps, made in Nepal, that I purchased on impulse in the Student Activities Center one Thursday. The hat has accompanied me to more than one wintry bonfire, and it carries the smell of smoke hidden within itself, and imbues my hair with it so that I smell like a campfire after a day of walking around the city.

My most recent love is the wool sweater. Long ago, when all my shopping trips were initiated and accompanied by my mother, I acquired, at a used clothing store, a thick wool sweater manufactured by Eddie Bauer. It is Christmas-red, with white snowflakes sewn on, and it is the warmest garment I possess. When I was younger, I couldn't stand the scratchiness of wool, but my skin is more tolerant now, and the weather is colder. I wore that Christmas sweater at least three times a week this fall and winter, starting sometime in October.

I never thought I would become partial to sweaters, especially not wool sweaters. I guess I'm growing up.

Finally, Winter

This morning I woke to gray light. Where is the burning sunrise? I wondered, and looked out the window, and it was: snow! This new window, in this new home, looks east into on a narrow yard where a tree stretches twigs across the sky. All the green had gone out of the yard. Snow was still falling, large soft flakes. The sky was white, the yard was white, the tree black, the light cloud-gray.

We dragged ourselves out of bed, put on hats and coats and boots, and tumbled out into the falling white. Later we ate scones, drank tea, played Pictionary. I played with the landlord's Labrador in the backyard while my husband shoveled snow in front. When he sprinkled the salt, small dark circles blossomed around the grains where they landed.

So winter has really come here, at last. I hope the snow stays, to remind me that this is a season, which is bound to come and to go in its time, and that it is a season of softness as well as coldness.

Sonnet-esque

Elegance/Increase

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
when timid leaves, pale green or red, do sprout
from tree-tips stretching skyward as the cold
winter withdraws—Spare elegance, I leave thee.
Grace of branches bared to the blue sky,
I leave thee. Leaves shall clothe me:
chaos of foliage, riot of increase, of life
profuse, protruding—extending, exploding—
growing greener, greater, and singing in the wind
and sun, as spring comes, comes out shyly
from the tender tree-tips. Crisp blank snow,
silent still ice, I leave thee; creeping greening
bursting beginning rustling hustling
falling flying Spring, I greet thee.

[2/12/11]

I'm taking a poetry workshop, and for this week's assignment, I ended up writing three independent poems in the process of trying to express the idea I had landed on--singleness as "that which I must leave ere long." As given away by that quotation and by my poem's first line, Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 was echoing in my head as I wrote this. And then it worked out that it has the requisite 14 lines to be a sonnet.

I didn't bring this poem in to workshop (it was draft 2 of 3), but I showed it to my professor and he called it "good exercise," which (like his lavish compliments of draft 1, not posted here) was an unexpected reaction. He says writing to the seasons is something that one should do, especially if one is a Californian living temporarily in a place with real seasons; but he seems to think that seasonal poems are not poetic/personal/ownable or something in the same way that properly lyric poems are...

Anyway, there is my spring poem, rippling along the surface of my feelings about the major life changes that are coming, as surely as the seasons.

Melt

A few days ago, everything was ice. The snow was a sheet of glass, icicles dangled from the streetlamps. The sidewalks were scarred with salt.

Today, everything is melting. "It's spring, and the world is puddle-wonderful." Mud smiles everywhere. For the first time in months, the grass sees the sun. The snow is naked again. It is disintegrating into heaps of lace.

It's still weather for a wool coat, but it's time to throw it open and welcome in the wind.

Winter Break

This is the tangerine time. The orange is burning through the green in the tangerine rinds that are still wrapped around the fruit, which is still hanging on the tree. The frost polishes the fruit, wearing away the green. At least, that's what it looks like to me.

This is the mucus time, the mucky time. We are all coughing, choking, sputtering. The phlegm leaps out of my throat, or it threatens to explode my skull. The words do the same thing. They take possession of my tongue and spray out into the kitchen or the living room. Sometimes they collide with someone's face. Sometimes they look like tears when they land on skin.

This year they seem to dry quickly though, and it seems more and more plausible that the words were never actually visible, that I am imagining them, that in fact the world is quiet and still.

With the cold, peace is burning through the murk and muck. Delusions and deceptions are being ground away, leaving the truth to gleam in the winter sun. The pile of dirty tissues is getting higher and higher, but someday soon, I will be able to breathe. I believe.

Winter Air

[This is from last week, actually. I wrote it into my psych notebook after thinking through it as I was walking to class.]

I have to shatter the air to breathe. The crystalline shards pierce my nostrils and lungs as I inhale. (I wonder, will one find my heart?) The sun slices through my eyes, and through the few remaining leaves. The naked trees stand bravely, but I tuck my chin into my scarf and scurry toward shelter.

Winter has descended, turning all things sharp: the tree branches, the blades of grass like swords; the passage of each minute as we tumble toward the precipitous drop from this year to the next; the rays of the brilliance from our star; the crescent moon; my words. Each movement crushes a thousand frozen structures, the dirt, the air. The wind moves in unison, an army of air, marching in perfect step, even running, graceful as dancers who have been practicing together for thousands of years.