Home for the holidays

This morning, as we drove north  on Hwy 65, we saw a couple of large flocks of geese while we were passing through Isanti. I have no idea where they’re finding any open water, if they are, but it was a treat to see them. The Better Half also saw some swans that I didn't because traffic and I was driving. Under this rapidly aging exterior, the heart of a waterfowler still beats strong.

Last night I began rereading Donald Hall’s Christmas at Eagle Pond. This season is a wonderful time to luxuriate in nostalgia. I miss New England a lot at Christmas season, especially since Massachusetts rarely, if ever, got as cold as is typical in Minnesota in winter. This morning’s 12℉ as we pulled out of the driveway was a shock to our systems until the Jeep warmed up. Then, again, there’s the message on one of my all time favorite tree ornaments that tempers my desires to “return home” to New England. 

Home is where  your  dog lives.

Photo by J. Harrington

Over the years we’ve developed a family tradition of Dad (that’s me) buying  a Christmas story book each year. This year’s was the Yule Tomte we mentioned a day or so ago. The Daughter Person has made sure the  Granddaughter got a letter explaining about Tomtes and Christmas and magic. Now we just need enough of each generation to get over colds and/or whatever folks have been trading so we can all get together again without infecting each other. Fingers crossed for a fully recuperative weekend.

Yesterday’s posting noted some frustrations and complexities about the tractor, diesel fuel and additives and dealing with snow and winter. Today progress has been made, we think. There’s fresh fuel in the tractor’s tank. The fuel has stabilizer added and all seemed to run fairly well, but we promise to not complain if we don’t need to use the tractor to clear the drive all winter.  We’d even leave Santa some extra cookies if he  delivered on that.

Cold Poem

by Mary Oliver

Cold now.
Close to the edge. Almost
unbearable. Clouds
bunch up and boil down
from the north of the white bear.
This tree-splitting morning
I dream of his fat tracks,
the lifesaving suet.

I think of summer with its luminous fruit,
blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,
handfuls of grain.

Maybe what cold is, is the time
we measure the love we have always had, secretly,
for our own bones, the hard knife-edged love
for the warm river of the I, beyond all else; maybe

that is what it means the beauty
of the blue shark cruising toward the tumbling seals.

In the season of snow,
in the immeasurable cold,
we grow cruel but honest; we keep
ourselves alive,
if we can, taking one after another
the necessary bodies of others, the many
crushed red flowers.

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