Mother Nature is not kidding this month, with brutal cold, storms, ice, and wind. I came up here to be closer to nature. Be careful what you wish for. I’m aching for Spring. Winter makes us appreciate Spring. The Winter Pasture is worth it. When the power went out (again), I dug up “An Old Man’s Night” By Robert Frost, and read it by a night light. I know that man.
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Poem: An Old Man’s Winter Night By Robert Frost.
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“All of outdoors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.”
cont.
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If you look closely, you can see the body of a Finch, eating at the feeder.
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“He stood with barrels round him—at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off, and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, everyday things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with what he knew.
A quiet light, and then not even that.”
cont.
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Joe is in the snow; it may be April or May before the fallen birch can be removed and Joe can be possibly repaired.
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“He consigned to the moon,—such as she was,
So late-arising,—to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep.
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, it disturbed him, and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man—one can’t fill a house,
A farm, a countryside, or, if he can,
It’s thus he does it on a winter night.”
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Sunrise
My today Tree.
Landscape, fallen birch.
Zip