Blanket of Snow
Blankets of snow cover branches
Trees nestled in a bed of snow
Bushes like pillows on snow mattress
Sleeping Beauty beds down on snowy down feathers
Branches dip in to pond
testing the waters
like a toe testing the bathwater
Is the water warmer than the air?
Empty bridge between shores
Unity that cannot be merged
No one to cross the bridge
Why is it there?
Is it for lost souls
who might wish to cross?
Is this stagnant pond in limbo?
Or is it the fast-flowing River Styx?
Where is the boatman?
Where is the boat?
Where is the corpse of the deceased?
So much water under the bridge
in a life that has seen so much
Persephone in the underworld
Hades keeping her prisoner
Will she be back in time for spring?
Will the groundhog see her shadow?
Hibernating trees under blankets of snow
Sleeping Beauties under blankets of eiderdown
Cabin fever and February blues
Spring fever and April rains
Do you not long for spring?
May tree limbs poke their limbs out
from beneath blankets of snow
May trees stretch and yawn
and drag themselves out of the bed of snow
"Hey you!
up and at em
rise and shine
don't be a sleepy head
come out of hibernation
don't sleep your life away,"
says the groundhog to the Sleeping Beauties.
A Poeture Speaks a Thousand Words
Limbo (from the Latin "limbus," hem, edge or boundary) is a Catholic notion about the afterlife. Medieval European scholars speculated that Hell (the underworld) was divided into 4 areas, Hell of the Damned (where they wicked are eternally punished), (Purgatorium (Purgatory, where some souls nust undego purification before proceeding to Heaven), Limbus Patrum (Limbo of the Patriarchs, where those who preceded Jesus, and thus were not granted grace, reside until the Day of Judgment), and Limbus Infantium (Limbo of Infants, where reside the spirits of infants who were too young to have committed personal sins but who were not yet baptized). The notion may have been derived from the Greek idea of the "asphodel meadows" where ordinary souls dwelled, rather than in the Ēlýsion pedíon (Elysian Fields), reserved for heroes, relatives of the gods, the righteous, and those chosen by the gods, or in Tartaros, where the wicked were punished. Dante portrayed Limbo as the 1st circle of Hell, reserved for virtuous pagans.
ReplyDeleteStyx was the river between Earth and Hades, the Greek underworld, across which the ferryman Charon (son of Erebos, the primordial darkness) transported the souls of the dead. Dante placed Styx in the 5th circle of Hell, where the sullen and the wrathful are drowned in its muddy waters forever, with the wrathful fighting each other. His ferryman, however, was Phlegyas, who had been killed by Apollo for torching his temple, in retaliation for the god's killing of Phlegyas' daughter due to her infidelity. Apollo had left a white raven to guard her, and when the raven reported the affair Apollo turned its feathers black for not pecking out the eyes of her lover.
The Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch (Penndylvanian Dutch) are descended from German-speaking people who settled in Pennsylvania in the 17th and 18th centuries and who mostly maintained their separate dialect until after World War II (at one time more than 1/3 of the state's population spoke the language). One of their traditional beliefs was that if a groundhog saw its shadow it would retreat back to its den and winter would persist another 6 weeks. The US and Canada informally celebrate 2 February as "Groundhog Day.
The groundhog is also known as a woodchuck. Robert Frost honored the little critter in his poem "A Drumlin Woodchuck." A drumlin (from the Irish "droimnin," littlest ridge) is an elongated hill shaped like an inverted spoon or 1/2 buried egg.
ReplyDeleteOne thing has a shelving bank,
Another a rotting plank,
To give it cozier skies
And make up for its lack of size.
My own strategic retreat
Is where two rocks almost meet,
And still more secure and snug,
A two-door burrow I dug.
With those in mind at my back
I can sit forth exposed to attack
As one who shrewdly pretends
That he and the world are friends.
All we who prefer to live
Have a little whistle we give,
And flash, at the least alram
We dive down under the farm.
We allow some time for guile
And don't come out for a while
Either to eat or drink.
We take occasion to think.
And if after the hunt goes past
And the double-barreled blast
(Like war and pestilence
And the loss of common sense),
If I can with confidence say
That still for another day,
Or even another year,
I will be there for you, my dear,
It will be because, though small
As measured against the All,
I have been so instinctively thorough
About my crevice and burrow.
Hades, the god of the underworld, abducted and married Persephone, the daughter of Zeus and fertility goddes Demeter. The goddess went on strike, leading to worldwide famine and causing Zeus to intercede with his brother. Hades tricked Persephone into eating a few pomegranate seeds and thern claimed that she must stay with him during that same number of months, though she could return to her mother the rest of the year. In that way the seasons came into being: the Earth would be abandoned by Demeter during the months her daughter was away, and would make the land fruitful when reunited with her.
ReplyDelete