Cold enough for ya?

Once again we’re stuck with outside temperatures in single digits. I was complaining about how abnormal this cold is, until I looked at a photo from last year about this time (actually, February 15), where the outside temperature was -24℉ at about 5 am.

February cold

Photo by J. Harrington

Patience has never been one of my strong points, but this winter seems longer and more unrelenting than most. Minnesota rarely does a good job with spring and the climate scientists that warned us about global warming must not have spent a February in this state.

Now for the good news! The Better Half, on tasting yesterday’s Irish sourdough artisan bread, proclaimed the taste “wonderful!” So the new recipe is a winner and we’ll move on to trying a kernza / Irish flour combination next. That means we’ll get to have a legitimate reason to have the oven on which will help warm the rest of the upstairs. I need to be sure and remember winter’s cold temperatures if I ever get tempted to think about an outside wood-fired oven for baking. It won’t wok for me unless I can tend it while dog walking and even then...?

Another piece of good news, even more personal, is that the Valentine’s present the Better Half got me finally arrived yesterday. It was a totally unexpected surprise! For some years now I’ve been a fan of both Ted Kooser’s and Jim Harrison’s poetry, especially their Braided Creek, a Conversation in Poetry. I’ve also long been fascinated by the question of how they came to know each other and became friends. Well, it turns out that before Braided Creek was published, a limited edition chapbook of their poems was printed by Aralia Press under the title A Conversation, a copy of which was my Valentine’s present this year. I can now spend additional hours pondering which of them wrote which unattributed poem. As the poets note: “This little book is an assertion in favor  of poetry and against credentials.”

from “Braided Creek”

How one old tire leans up against
another, the breath gone out of both.

Old friend,
perhaps we work too hard
at being remembered.

Which way will the creek
run when time ends?
Don’t ask me until
this wine bottle is empty.

While my bowl is still half full,
you can eat out of it too,
and when it is empty,
just bury it out in the flowers.

All those years
I had in my pocket.
I spent them,
nickel-and-dime.

Each clock tick falls
like a raindrop,
right through the floor
as if it were nothing.

In the morning light,
the doorknob, cold with dew.

The Pilot razor-point pen is my
compass, watch, and soul chaser.
Thousands of miles of black squiggles.

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