Minus Forty
A Polar Vortex
Listen Here- Podcast Style
Winter knows to hush, still, listen
so the soul can speak.Angie Welland-Crosby
In the shadows it seems the sun has forgotten the sound of her own name.
It has been an old fashioned winter this year. One that my youth knows well.
What do we ever forget? In the exile of a hibernation I find myself looking back.
Looking way back. Memories. Memories have been wrapping me. Growing out of me. Memories have been dripping from inside of me like the massive icicles on the roofs. The massive jaws of icicles that are fed by the heat that the walls can no longer contain. The polar vortex has come to call. Come to claim. The walls are defenceless. Leaking. Breached. Water can no longer fight back. Frozen solid. Numb.
The cold is summoning the warmth to follow it like a pied piper playing a hypnotizing pipe flute tune of wind gusted gale and ice. We have been washed white
under heavy blankets of snow that smother and swallow the present moment.
Do we remember things or do they remember us?
The memories seem to be remembering me. I did not summon them.
The Spector of the past has come to claim me again. The waning and shrivelling late January moon reflects any meagre light that the cold has not devoured.
The ice whispers my name. She has not forgotten.
Minus Forty
A second thought
shaped in the curves of contemplation
that grope at the moist darkness,
bows before the morning rose.
The cold has come to call
encamped outside my blankets.
Waiting for me to make the first move.
A polar vortex has come to clean.
Come to claim. Everything
the frost has not already devoured.
The present has retreated into the frozen
coagulation of time. Only memories survive
the exile. Memories. Bundled up in layers
of the past that wrap me in the mist
of my own breath clinging to me
like a small child afraid of what is underneath the bed.
The ice has spoken into the freezing ache of numbness.
The walls are defenceless. Even water has hardened her flow.
Holding. Hibernating. Retreating
behind her shield to brace
against the penetrating sword. Memories.
The pain makes no sound
All of me has come -
to listen.
© Jamie MillardThank you for Being - Here!
May the mid winter wrap you in reflection and plant the seeds of growth soon to be born in the song of spring. Keep moving. Stay warm. Stay well. We need you. Have the best of days.
Lots of Love,
Jamie
Wow! A powerful piece to make all of us come and listen.
Do we remember? Or do the memories re-call us? Such great questions.
The frosty atmosphere along with the icicles, and unspoken yet loudly implied memories speak to me of the inner permafrost.
Only the reference to the child afraid of monsters under the bed, a shield bracing against the penetrating sword, and the silent pain, hinting at what has been frozen into numbness under those all devouring blankets of ice, four decades deep.
A masterful poem and poetic prose cutting into the glacial cave of hibernation 🔥🙏 💕
“The waning and shrivelling late January moon reflects any meagre light that the cold has not devoured.
The ice whispers my name. She has not forgotten.”
there’s so much here, before you get to the poem. beautiful writing, Jamie.