On the cusp of winter, seemingly much delayed

On the cusp of winter
panic sets in with us
thinking that next week all might be snow and ice when we
oh dear don’t have our wood in yet.
Still not yet.

And in that window fall chores enlarging,
eagerly taking up all available time until we straighten up from one shovel or another
and looking up looking stricken once again
are dismayed at our gluttony
in riding the cusp always.
In always never quite making it and yet
congratulating ourselves at each step:
this we managed to get out of the way before we could not.

In bog and field colors slowly losing battles
with the ice coming and going
remaining a little more each day of going farther
and deeper, strong hues
bit by bit bleeding all into beiges and greys and umbers
until the great white blanket scrapes the canvas clean
for a new world sketched in grays and blues
and sometimes pink

But with the ice retreating more
than advancing even as
even now it is still there and soon
to be more but still, the greens
and the red bits poking up
and insistently reminding,
“I ain’t dead yet,
I have some work to do.”

after e.e. cummings

7 thoughts on “On the cusp of winter, seemingly much delayed

  1. I loved these lines

    “until the great white blanket scrapes the canvas clean
    for a new world sketched in grays and blues
    and sometimes pink”

    lovely. and I loved “and sometimes pink” as the unexpected counterpoint to the seriousness of the winter grays and blues, added as a dropped almost throwaway line. Very fine.

    Photos are incredible.

  2. The poem is apropos – good choice. Magnificent photos – Jacques Frost is an artist and you are his biographer.

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