WINTER MORNING

Hello there! Long time no chat – how have you been?

I wanted to check in this morning, after the first of Ottawa’s “impactful” snowfall days, because I’ve been thinking about the winter season and noticing some things.

Like light. Have you ever noticed how the quality of winter light is softer somehow, than summer or autumn light? It seems, especially on an overcast day, to be somewhat diffused, as through it beams through some sort of fine gauze. Also, there’s a stillness to winter that I think is unique to this season. Have you noticed this?

It is, of course, the season of hibernation. Of pulling back, of pulling in, of rest. At least it is in Nature, and I’ve been thinking that I want some of that for myself this season. Less doing, more open space. Less multi-tasking, more one-thing-at-a-time. I’ve come up with one or maybe two Winter Projects: activities that are suited to this season of replenishing. One thing I plan to do is write a new poem every week. Here’s one:

WINTER MORNING

The world is always 
calling us back, offering itself to our attention, and yes
to our affection if
we open enough to receive the call.
Take this morning —
one like so many to come as we
trudge into winter when
morning after morning means waking 
to frozen darkness
when clearly the better option is to
drift back down into sleep
a much more acceptable form of dark.
But here I am,
shivering by the window overlooking
the rayless back yard 
where in the early morning’s pale light
a lone black raven 
pokes through powder snow at a few
leaf remnants left behind by autumn 
and nearby
a solitary ebony squirrel 
stands still as if frozen, tail twitching for reasons obscure, 
and clinging to the perch on the feeder 
a chickadee 
scans for predators with nervous, jerky head motions.
When I notice the chickadee’s black cap emerging in the shadowy light
I imagine it’s a toque hand-knit by a
grandmother chickadee during winter preparations 
and the little chickadee thanking her politely but secretly wishing 
it was a bit more fashionable like the woodpeckers wear. 
And then the squirrel jumps, scampering towards the shed and
kicking up clouds of white crystal snow,
its plume of a tail like a fine lady’s makeup brush, and she’s calling him
to her dressing room with a cry like the raven’s, who has just 
screamed a loud protest and now 
wings his way up, up, making another cloud of sparkly crystals
and in the moment he emerges 
like a phoenix, 
I realize
I have been warmed.

What have you been planning to do with your wintertime? I hope your winter season is one where you notice things that replenish you!

Lee Ann

What Else is New?

My series, “Fascinating Women You’ve Never Heard Of” continues! For you last-minute shoppers, how about introducing someone on your list to a new historical novel featuring a real and fascinating woman? I recently interviewed two authors of such books and I recommend both. Check with your local independent bookstore for:

What They Said About Luisa, by Erika Rummel. In 1575, Luisa Abrego, a freed slave from Seville, was tried in Mexico for bigamy by officers of the Spanish Inquisition. Aside from the trial record, no other documentation of her exists. Intrigued by that scrap of information, Renaissance historian and author Erika Rummel resurrects Luisa in her latest novel. My interview with Rummel is here.

A Pair of Wings, by Carole Hopson. Bessie Coleman was the first American to earn a civilian aviation certificate from the French Federation Aeronautique Internacionale (FAI). This was something she had to do because, being African American and female in the 1920s, nobody in the United States would train her to fly. My interview with Hopson is here.