By Mary Oliver
Cold now.
Close to the edge. Almost
unbearable. Clouds
bunch up and boil down
from the north of the white bear.
This tree-splitting morning
I dream of his fat tracks,
the lifesaving suet.
I think of summer with its luminous fruit,
blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,
handsful of grain.
Maybe what cold is, is the time
we measure the love we have always had, secretly
for our own bones, the hard knife-edged love
for the warm river of the I, beyond all else; maybe
that is what it means, the beauty
of the blue shark cruising toward the tumbling seals.
In the season of snow,
in the immeasurable cold,
we grow cruel but honest; we keep
ourselves alive,
if we can, taking one after another
the necessary bodies of others, the many
crushed red flowers.
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It was miserably cold on Friday -- again, not as bad as many other places, but cold enough to make me want to spend as little time outdoors as possible. I drove Maddy to work, met friends inside the mall, and did a Groudon raid, but otherwise I spent the day working indoors!
We had dinner with my parents, then came home and watched the US figure skating women's championship, which was quite good this year (Bradie, Mirai, Karen, Ashley, Starr!). Have some photos from last month of the US Botanical Garden's Roadside America miniature train display:
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