Poetry Treasure on the Sledding Hill
There’s plenty of poetry to find at dusk at the top of a sledding hill on the last of December days. The lights from the surrounding houses have just turned on and their glow is far enough away to look like fireflies and you know it’s not summer, but you feel the light of their love song all the same.
With each trip down the hill you learn more of its grooves and bumps but knowing doesn’t lessen the anticipation—the perfect mix of fear and excitement—when you fly over one, not sure when you’ll land and you are certain when you exhale, butterflies—blue and grey and silver—will fly from you, shuddering and shaky from being set free.
There is poetry in the hot cider, the warm fire, the most pressing question there is to ask at the top of a sledding hill: how many of us can we get in a train and can we all stay together?
There is poetry in the sky that turns from grey-blue to blueberry blue, to black-ice blue and there is poetry in you, because you’re saying, “Once more, just once more, one more time again,” and you know that young girl is still there. She’s alive and well and in awe of the cold and sparkling world around her.
Back at home though, particularly on the first day back at work, poetry is hard to find. Maybe it’s clunky and tired and stubborn. Or maybe that’s you because there is no snow and there is no sledding hill. There is a long walk against wind that spits rain under a sky that is not blueberry blue but mucky grey and that’s how it’ll stay all day until it’s night and it snuffs itself out—a puff of smoke that never felt a flame.
You walk on because you have to, and because there is a warmth in stepping into your very own office, and because that girl pleading breathlessly, “One more time again,” is still with you, waiting to see how you’ll answer.
You hang your coat on its hook, walk to your desk and pull the first page of the wall calendar out—January 2023—large white boxes outlined in black and the border is butterflies—like the ones you set free tearing down the sledding hill.
Of course that didn’t really happen. We don’t exhale butterflies, but here they are all the same—a reminder. Of growth. Of change. Of surprise.
But you can’t simply stare at what’s not moving. It is time to act, and so you turn to your desk, sit down, and check email. Your first message is from your child’s math teacher explaining that the upcoming final is going to be hard. “But,” she writes, “it is also a time to step back and marvel at all you’ve learned.”
“I hope you all marvel,” the math teacher tells us.
You think again of the butterflies—those you set free, and the ones still waiting to fly.
Try It: Sledding Hill
Last week, you looked for poetry in other peoples’ words. This week, hunt for poetry in your own circumstances, this time using your words. Include a sledding hill if you have one!
Photo by Tristan Loper Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Callie Feyen.
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Katie Spivey Brewster says
Avian Breakfast
Two jays atop the table
Pecking their own picnic
Downys on the feeders
Doves strutting below
Juncos and cardinals
Chickadees join the feast.
Bethany R. says
“Downys on the feeders”
How sweet, Katie. Thanks for sharing this!