The last few days have been warm enough for open windows and bare feet. The yard looks like winter, but the sky looks like summer.
Warm wind rattles through bare branches and ripples over a raveled carpet of leaves. Migrating birds gather in restless flocks, and I wonder if they regret flying south too soon.
Or maybe the birds know best. After all, the calendar insists that December is here, even if the sky doesn’t agree.
I grew up in a house with a wood burning stove, so all of my winter memories are tinged with the scent of smoke.
Mother ordered the first load of wood mid-summer, which gave it time to cure. She ordered a cord at a time, requesting a mixture of kindling and longer burning logs. It arrived as a tumbled pile at the end of the driveway, and we hauled it off by armfuls and wheelbarrow loads, stacking neat rows under the tin roof of our open-sided pole shed.
Starting in my teens, I claimed the wood as my own domain because I enjoyed the physical activity of hauling and stacking. Plus, it gave me an excuse to be outside with the animals, who followed me back and forth as I worked.
Mother disliked storing firewood on the porch, so she rarely wanted more than one day’s supply brought down each afternoon. However, she relented when we had snow or ice storms. Then I would carry wood until my shoulders and back ached.
Or until I got bored and wandered off to explore the pasture and woods.
The stove was undeniably harder to maintain than central heat, but it was also undeniably warmer.
Except it didn’t heat the entire house. Our den was a smoky, sleepy haven, but my bedroom, in the opposite end of the house, stayed so chilly that blankets were not sufficient for a comfortable night’s sleep. Even so, I didn’t suffer. I had plenty of furry companions to keep me warm.
With swirling breezes and temperatures in the seventies, today might have been mistaken for spring.
The pear tree shrugged off its cloak of leaves and stood all day, bare-limbed, in a pool of gold and brown.
Robins and warblers perched on sunlit branches, their restless urge to forage temporarily forgotten.
But today’s weather shouldn’t fool any of us, trapped as we are in winter’s web.
An early dusk approaches, wheeling night behind it. Sleep is creeping through the yard, with months to go before waking.
Whoa, December, wait one minute
I’ve hardly roused from my feasted slumber
When you start to number my days
Set clocks and worry flocks of shoppers
Lost in evergreen lots and sticker-shock
Tick tock, sweet silver bells ring the hour
As if to hurry my step into line
My dour minuet with Father Time
Stumbling on to the end
The bitter end of another year
Another calendar page, scrawled
With duty and a glitter of waste
With things I never desired
The blouse gift-receipt, creased
In haste and taped over the size
I couldn’t accept; a final refrain
After the glaze is scraped
From cold and golden morns
And oh, December, please wait
For the lights to change, for fire
To blaze through our litter of wrappings
Pause tonight among muttering beasts
In their scatter of straw, their dusty ease
From lust’s numb ache, from labor’s strain
Rest among these flight-tired geese
Mid-route, heads tucked under folded
Wings, murmuring psalms to themselves
Robins pipe a shrill warning whenever I enter the yard, freezing rabbits and squirrels and warblers mid-meal.
Their tense silence intensifies the pear tree’s rattle, the dry wind-notes that flash red and gold in chilly sunshine.
Perhaps an early snow will muffle it all, an icy blanket for the long dark hours ahead…
Rae Spencer 