The Heart Warms— Now at Principle Gallery, Alexandria
This morning of the small snow I count the blessings, the leak in the faucet which makes of the sink time, the drop of the water on water.
–Charles Olson, The Maximus Poems (1960)
Came out the door of the house a little before 5 this morning and was greeted by a couple of inches of snow I hadn’t been expecting. Guess I should pay more attention to the weather reports.
The snow was lovely though. It was light and fluffy and filled with frozen, shiny ice crystals, the kind that glimmer on the surface like gems in the moonlight.
When I walked it made a crunching sound under my foot. There was no wind nor even a breeze and the trees were quiet as though they intently listening. This made me aware of the surrounding absolute quiet that allowed me to hear the crunch of my footsteps.
Listening deeper now, I could hear the sound of falling snowflakes coming to rest on the ground.
It’s such a delicate sound. Hearing these tiny soft taps has a calming, slowing effect on me, allowing me to take a more relaxed stance that makes the cold feel less biting.
I no longer feel the need to hurry through the snow to the studio. Instead, I linger for a few precious moments in the woods and absorb the blessing of the snow quiet.
For that brief instance, I feel gloriously and placidly distant from the woes and worries of the world.
And I know in a flash of realization that is just what I needed this morning– an elixir to reset and resync the inner self that had been knocked out of rhythm in recent days.
There’s some sort of magic in the snow quiet.
I may not be certain about much in this world, but I am positive about this.
Let’s have a song for the first Sunday Morning Music of the New Year. I was planning on playing a different song from one of my favorites, the Irish singer/songwriter Lisa Hannigan, but this particular song and performance is such a natural partner for the words above that that other song will have to wait for another morning. This is her song Snow. It has that snow quiet feel. Just lovely.
Redtree Times 