Keeping the heart warm

Hall window, 3:42 am

~~~~~~~~~~

I had plans to go out today. First, the farmers market. When I woke up at 9:30 I heard a telltale whistle against the glass, the distinctive muffled softness of traffic in the road. I peeled up the corner of the curtain and saw the fuzzy blur of white. It's only a few blocks to the market, but I didn't have the guts to go out in that. All I needed from market was maple syrup. I can live without that for another week, can't I?

The second plan was to go out dancing tonight with Les and Jon, but as the afternoon wore on and the flakes kept howling around the house, the ploughs flashing past with blue lights, pickup trucks skidding out of the parking lot across the road, even the tread marks on York Road became drifted over with white, we phoned and emailed our deflating enthusiasm for a night drive to Cambridge.

When storm winds switch to the east, they bite straight through my living room window. My living space would be unbearable without the new space heater. Even so, I'm bundled in a sweater and heavy socks, my fingers growing cramped with cold on the keyboard. It's hard to get the mind moving in a refrigerator with beasts and spirits ravening at the door locks, around brick corners of the house. I called Pittsburgh today, talked briefly to ghostsandrobots while she decorated the store window for Valentine's Day. It set a little campfire in the soul.

I wish we could all sit around the heart-licking flames one night. A few of you would bring your guitars. We would look at some stars and sing some songs. We would have a couple beers and roast some marshmallows. Maybe a few of us would sneak off for a skinny dip. We have to be a little discrete because I'm thinking of a family affair, with room for my girls, Jude, Elli and all the others. The kind of big bonfire-do I remember from my childhood, with potato salad, Jell-O and hot dogs. Where the teenagers sneak off into the dark woods and do what teenagers do. Where adults can sneak off to the tent and do what adults do. Where the childless folks who like kids get to hold babies on their knees for a change and tell ghost stories to the older tykes.

That's the sort of place I would like to be tonight, where my relatives are the friends who warm my heart like two lovers zipping their sleeping bags together.


( Closeup )

Saturday night

Feeling kindly he got up
and went to the kitchen
to do the dishes despite
my half-hearted protest.

Not on a Saturday night,
I said sit down, relax.
He said, I'd do them for
anyone else, besides

My hands are cold. After
cleaning up he was on
a roll, lifted down the big
mixing bowl and started

To make my favourite
winter snack: pumpkin
bread with cinnamon
nutmeg cloves four eggs.

Poured orange batter into
three loaf pans, pushed
them side by side in the
oven and set the timer

For an hour. Now, he said
rinsing bowl and spoon
in the sink. While they're
baking let's have a game of

Solitaire.