"I'm getting a little chilly myself..."

 We checked in at the A-frame today, wondering how the place had fared after a weekend ice-storm. Because the cold continues, trees struggle to bear the weight of 3/4" of ice. The sun makes it all beautiful - but it's a dangerous beauty.

The A-frame's looking fine. Lots of small branches have dropped from the more brittle older trees. The creaking of the trees reminds me not to linger too long beneath them. Long enough to think of the number of times Al wrote about ice, snow, and cold, oh the cold.

"-scrambling along
the rocky shore
late at night
in zero cold and silence
I stand hesitating on the armoured lake
ice two feet thick
then hear
the sound of trumpets
clash of cymbals
right under my feet
deep penetrating
my bones' marrow
-lake ice splitting
from shore to distant shore..."

 from January at Roblin Lake, to Paris never again (1997)

 "Dissatisfied with myself
I wander back to the house
peer out the kitchen window
remembering the birth-cry of ice
while the world behind glass
is changing into winter....


from The Freezing Music, Naked with Summer in your Mouth (1994)

 "The earth is frozen
the beautiful trees are frozen
even the mailbox's metal nose is cold
and I'm getting a little chilly myself
living in a house I built one tropical summer...."

in One Rural Winter, The Cariboo Horses (1965)

                                "Tyrannosaurus
comes lumbering around the stalled
Quaternary glaciers to deliver his ancient
                                 thundering manifesto
modified to suit the times-
                                 Tyrannosaurus
roaming the bed clothes of earth-
Warm in the cold hutch rabbits endure
their scarcities"....

from Country Snowplow, The Cariboo Horses (1965)