Deep into Winter

photo by C. Wilker


Today it's snowing, just the light snowflakes borne by the wind. Tracks in my backyard make me think that some rabbits in the neighbourhood had quite a time in the crisp clean snow. We could ask, what if they had a party out there, but I think this was a smaller gathering or one rabbit frolicking around having fun, making his own tracks.

Then I think of fields covered with snow and of corn stalk stubble showing through.

When I was small, we always seemed to have a lake in one front field, a place that was lower than other areas, at least  until Dad hired people to lay tiles to drain the water from the surface and draw it away. What I remember is skating on the small body of frozen (not deep) water with corn stalks poking through at intervals.

Dad brought a few straw bales out from the barn that we could sit on to put on our skates. We played hockey or just skated around the stubble.


My memory in a poem:




Frozen weeds were goalposts

where corn grew tall   two seasons before
our open air arena     rippled and bumpy

we shot castoff pucks
past frosted clumps of earth
                    and shorn stalks 
wobbly ankles on sharpened blade
laughing   cheering
‘til jack frost bit         
                   our fingers and our noses

we skidded to our hay bale bench
shoved tingling toes into waiting boots
                     and hurried to a warm kitchen




Published in Tower Poetry

Winter Edition 2006-2006 Vol. 54 No. 2


Photo and poem copyright of Carolyn R. Wilker.

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