wordpainting

These things I see, I could not create if I tried . . .

A gruff man in a cowboy hat with a lit cigarette hanging in his mouth, sitting with the engine running in his tan metallic long-bed Ford pickup truck with a full load of firewood dusted with snow, waiting outside the cable company . . .

The golden stubs of a corn field poking their stalky fingers out of the thick blanket of white, against the fading pale pink horizon. . .

A weathered red barn, the wood in danger of collapse at any moment, against the stark winter landscape. . .

A tiny round bird resting beside a tuft of snow in the bare stalks of the hedge in my front yard . . .

The morning sight of a lone figure making his way on cross-country skis across the lake . . .

In the afternoon, another with a device like a massive corkscrew, shuffling on foot back from a center point where he has drilled, presumably to test the ice thickness for its readiness to hold the ice fishermen . . .

And then the narrow glimmering fingernail of moon rising in the pale blue arc of the sky at sunset over the cottage when I arrive home.

They are things I drink in every day, images I think I will carry in my heart for life. It is so very beautiful out here.

(Despite the 40 minutes of shoveling the driveway this morning . . .)