This feels like the first real North Country winter we’ve had in years. Five or six falls of powder without a thaw. Temperatures below zero at night. Not just coat weather, but scarf and mittens and boots. I prefer to observe it out the upstairs window, from behind my desk, wearing a cardigan and drinking coffee. It’s a good perch from which to consider the outlines of my next book.
The Open Field
All the work of last summer is purified now, deep in snow.
Game trails pierce the once claustrophobic honeysuckle.
Fox and rabbit make dens in stacks of brush and deadfall.
The back yard opens out towards the river, back to trees
whose growth has tumbled the stones of the old pasture wall.
Morning sun floods between their limbs into my back room.
At least one more season of clearing work remains, or three–
who can say–but it is good work, the results plain to see.
In a world full of pointless and invisible toil, this is not nothing.
The open field is only a beginning, the way a blank page
is necessary to beginning a new book. Fresh, unstained,
it is fit to hold anything imaginable, anything at all.
